Evidence of Leon TrotskyÕs Collaboration with Germany and ...marxism.halkcephesi.net/Grover Furr/Furr tortsky japan.pdf · This essay is an inquiry into the evidence that Leon Trotsky

Copyright © 2009 by Grover Furr and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087

Evidence of Leon Trotsky’s Collaboration with Germany and Japan

Grover Furr

Gen. Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord Leon Trotsky Gen. Hajime Sugiyama

“If an objective research project on the events of those years were to be done, free of

ideological dogmas, then a great deal could change in our attitude towards those years

and towards the personalities of that epoch. And so it would be a “bomb” that would

cause some problems. . . .”

– Col. Viktor Alksnis, 2000.

“. . . it is essential for historians to defend the foundation of their discipline: the

supremacy of evidence. If their texts are fictions, as in some sense they are, being literary

compositions, the raw material of these fictions is verifiable fact. Whether the Nazi gas

ovens existed or not can be established by evidence. Because it has been so established,

those who deny their existence are not writing history, whatever their narrative

techniques.”

– Eric Hobsbawm, 1994, p. 57.

“. . . we can demolish a myth only insofar as it rests on propositions which can be shown

to be mistaken.”

– ibid., p. 60.

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This essay is an inquiry into the evidence that Leon Trotsky may have

collaborated with German and/or Japanese officials, whether governmental or military,

during the 1930s.

Trotsky was charged with and convicted in absentia of such collaboration at the

three Moscow “Show,” or public, Trials of 1936, 1937 and 1938.1 Trotsky and his son

Leon Sedov2 were absent defendants and central figures in all these trials. Trotsky

himself proclaimed the charges false, but they were widely though not universally

credited until 1956. In February of that year Nikita Khrushchev delivered his famous

“Secret Speech” to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

(CPSU). Aside from much other matter that will not concern us here Khrushchev hinted,

without expressly affirming, that at least some of the defendants in these trials were

punished unjustly.

In succeeding years most of the defendants, along with thousands of others, were

“rehabilitated” and declared to have been innocent. Under Khrushchev’s successors

between 1965 and 1985 the wave of “rehabilitations” almost ceased. Subsequently,

during Mikhail Gorbachev’s tenure between 1985 and the end of the USSR in 1991, an

even larger flood of “rehabilitations” took place. Later in the present essay we will

discuss the essentially political, rather than juridical, nature of “rehabilitation.”

By the late 1980s almost all the defendants at all the Moscow Trials, plus the

defendants in the “Tukhachevsky Affair” of May-June 1937 and a great many others had

been declared to have been innocent of all charges. The chief exceptions were figures like

Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolai Ezhov, two heads of the NKVD3 who were certainly

responsible for massive repressions, and many of their subordinates.

Virtually alone among the non-NKVD oppositionists Trotsky and Sedov have

never been “rehabilitated.” But the dismissal of charges against their codefendants and

1 These trials are often called the “Show Trials.” Often too they are identified by the names of the one or two most famous defendants. Thus the trial of August 19-24, 1936 is often called the “Zinoviev-Kamenev Trial”; that of January 23-30, 1937, the Piatakov-Radek Trial”; that of March 2-13, 1938 the “Bukharin-Rykov” Trial. The formal names for these trials are as follows: August 1936: “The Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre”; January 1937: “The Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotskyite Centre”; March 1938: “The Case of the Anti-Soviet ‘Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites.’” 2 Leon Sedov died on February 16 1938, shortly before the third Moscow Trial. He continued to figure prominently in the confessions of some of the defendants, as did his father. 3 People’s Commissariat (= Ministry) of Internal Affairs, which included national security and political police functions.

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the declarations that all the conspiracies were fabrications means that they too have been

declared innocent in fact though not “rehabilitated” legally.

Meanwhile there is a scholarly consensus that the Moscow Trials were

fabrications, the defendants all innocent victims of frame-ups, and all the conspiracies

inventions either of the NKVD or of Stalin himself. This consensus is a constituent part

of the model, or paradigm, of Soviet history that is dominant within Russia itself and

beyond its borders. However, no significant evidence that the trials were fabricated and

the confessions faked has ever been published, while the vast majority of investigative

materials relating to the trials is still top-secret in Russia, unavailable even to trusted

scholars.

The Soviet Archives “Speak”

During the existence of the USSR and especially since Khrushchev’s accession to

power in 1953 few if any documents concerning the Moscow Trials and repressions of

the late 1930s were published in the USSR or made available in the archives to

researchers. Khrushchev and authorized historians and writers made a great many

assertions about this period of history but never gave anyone access to any evidence

about it.

Here is one example. At an historians’ conference in December 1962, after many

presentations by speakers promoting the official Khrushchev position about questions of

Soviet history the convener, Presidium member Piotr Pospelov, spoke the following

words:

Students are asking whether Bukharin and the rest were spies for foreign

governments, and what you advise us to read. I can declare that it is sufficient to

study carefully the documents of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU to say that

neither Bukharin, nor Rykov, of course, were spies or terrorists. (Vsesoiuznoe

soveshchanie 298).

While Pospelov’s words are literally correct, they create a false impression. In the

1938 Trial Bukharin and Rykov were not convicted of carrying out espionage themselves,

but of being leaders in the “bloc of Rights and Trotskyites” that did engage in espionage

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activities. Likewise both Bukharin and Rykov were convicted of recruiting others to

engage in acts of violence against others – the best Russian translation here of the word

“terror,” which means something quite different in English – but not of engaging in it

themselves. So Pospelov’s words are correct in the sense most readers will understand –

that a “spy” is someone who himself spies, and a terrorist someone who himself commits

acts of violence.

But Pospelov is incorrect insofar as he wishes his audience to understand that

their confessions and the verdict against them were wrong. Furtherrmore, the question

was about “Bukharin and the rest” – presumably, all the other defendants in the 1938

Trial, whereas Pospelov restricted his answer to Bukharin and Rykov only.

In the passage that immediately follows the quotation above Pospelov clearly told

his audience that the only materials historians should read are the official speeches made

at the 22nd Congress:

“Why is it not possible to create normal conditions for working in the Central

Party archive? They do not give out materials concerning the activity of the

CPSU.” I have already given you the answer.

In effect Pospelov was saying: “We are not going to give you access to any primary

sources.”

That situation continued until the USSR was dissolved. Thanks to documents

published since the end of the USSR we can now see that some of the speeches at the

22nd Party Congress contained blatant lies about the oppositionists of the 1930s – a fact

that fully explains Pospelov’s refusal to let anyone see the evidence.

As one example of the degree of falsification at the 22nd Party Congress and under

Khrushchev generally we cite Aleksandr Shelepin’s4 quotation from a letter to Stalin by

Komandarm 1st rank (= Full General, the rank just below Marshal) Iona E. Iakir, accused

of collaboration with Nazi Germany. In Shelepin’s quotation from Iakir’s letter to Stalin

of June 9, 1937, the text read by Shelepin is in boldface. The text in the original letter

(published in 1994) but omitted by Shelepin is in italics.

4 Head of the KGB (= State Security Committee), the successor to the security and political police functions of the former NKDV.

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“A series of cynical resolutions by Stalin, Kaganovich, Molotov, Malenkov and

Voroshilov on the letters and declarations made by those imprisoned testifies to

the cruel treatment of people, of leading comrades, who found themselves under

investigation. For example when it was his turn Iakir – the former commander of

a military region – appealed to Stalin in a letter in which he swore his own

complete innocence.

Here is what he wrote:

“Dear, close comrade Stalin. I dare address you in this manner

because I have said everything, given everything up, and it seems

to me that I am a noble warrior, devoted to the Party, the

state and the people, as I was for many years. My whole

conscious life has been passed in selfless, honest work in the

sight of the Party and of its leaders – then the fall into the

nightmare, into the irreparable horror of betrayal. . . . The

investigation is completed. I have been formally accused of

treason to the state, I have admitted my guilt, I have fully

repented. I have unlimited faith in the justice and propriety of the

decision of the court and the state. . . . Now I am honest in my

every word, I will die with words of love for you, the Party,

and the country, with an unlimited faith in the victory of

communism.”5

As Shelepin read it the letter is from an honest, loyal man protesting his innocence. In

reality Iakir fully admitted his guilt.

(There is also the matter of the two ellipses. Some of Iakir’s text has been omitted

even in this published version. Since Iakir confessed to treason to the state it is possible

that he refers to collaboration with Germany, with Trotsky, or perhaps with other

intelligence services. This is suggested in a tantalizing quotation in the case of Uritsky

5 Shelepin’s remarks are from his speech to the 22nd Party Congress of the CPSU, Pravda, October 27, 1961, p. 10, cols. 3-4. XXII S”ezd Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soiuza. 17-31 oktiabria 1961

goda. Stenograficheskii Otchet (Moscow, 1962). II, 403. The parts Shelepin omitted, here in bold text, are in the fuller version in the “Spravka” of the Shvernik Report of 1963-4 first published in Voenno-

Istoricheskii Arkhiv 1 (1993), p. 194, now normally cited from the volume Reabilitatsia. Kak Eto Bylo [“Rehabilitation. How It Happened”] vol. 2 (2003), p. 688.

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which we discuss briefly later in this essay. Iakir was one of the military figures involved

both with collaboration with Germany and with Trotsky.)

The falsification goes far beyond the speeches at the 22nd Congress. Archival

evidence now available permits us to see that Khrushchev, then later Gorbachev, and the

historians who wrote under their direction, lied consistently about the events of the Stalin

years to an extent that is scarcely imaginable.

A large number of documents from formerly secret Soviet archives have been

published since the end of the USSR. This is a very small proportion of what we know

exists. Especially as regards the oppositions of the 1930s, the Moscow Trials, the military

“purges,” and the massive repressions of 1937-38, the vast majority of the documents are

still top-secret, hidden way even from privileged, official researchers. Yet no system of

censorship is without its failures. Many documents have been published. Even this small

number enables us to see that the contours of Soviet history in the 1930s are very

different from the “official” version.

The Question of Trotsky And Collaboration With Germany and Japan

During the past decade a lot of documentary evidence has emerged from the

former Soviet archives to contradict the viewpoint, canonical since at least Khrushchev’s

time, that the defendants in the Moscow Trials and the “Tukhachevsky Affair” military

conspiracy were innocent victims forced to make false confessions. We have written a

number of works either published or in the process of publication pointing out that we

now have strong evidence that the confessions were not false and Moscow Trial

defendants appear to have been truthful in confessing to conspiracies against the Soviet

government. That work has led us to the present study.

Hypothesis

Leon Trotsky and his son Leon Sedov were indicted but absent defendants at each

of the three Moscow Trials. If the charges against and the confessions of other defendants

were basically accurate, as our research has suggested so far, that has implications for the

charges voiced at those trials that Trotsky was in league with fascist Germany and

militarist Japan. Such considerations led us to form the hypothesis for the present study:

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that a thorough search of published documents from the former Soviet archives would

turn up more evidence of Trotsky’s collaboration with Germany and Japan other than that

given at the three Moscow Trials.

We came to adopt this hypothesis in much the same way Stephen Jay Gould

describes how his colleague Peter Ward decided to test the “Alvarez hypothesis,” the so-

called Cretaceous-Tertiary catastrophic extinction that contradicted the hitherto widely

accepted theory of the gradual dying out of so many life-forms about 60 million years

ago.6 In the course of reading many documents from the former Soviet archives for other

research projects we had identified several that appeared to provide additional evidence

that Trotsky had indeed collaborated with Germany.

It seemed to us that more such documentary evidence might well be found if we

actually set out to look for it. We also realized that, if no one ever set about looking for it,

it would probably never be found and we would never know.

The fact that we have formed this hypothesis does not at all mean that we have

predetermined the result of our research. Some hypothesis or “theory” is a necessary

precondition to any inquiry. Gould reminds us of Darwin’s perceptive statement made to

Henry Fawcett in 1861:

How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or

against some view if it is to be of any service!7

The present study is a “test” in Gould’s sense: “a fine example of theory” – Gould means

“hypothesis” here – confirmed by data that no one ever thought of collecting before the

theory itself demanded such a test.

We have also been mindful of Gould’s caution that a test does not prejudice the

inquiry itself:

6 Stephen Jay Gould. Dinosaurs in the Haystack. Natural History 101 (March 1992): 2-13. Online at <http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_dinosaurs-haystack.html> and <http://www.sjgarchive.org/ library/text/b16/p0393.htm>. 7 Letter 3257 – Darwin, C. R. to Fawcett, Henry, 18 Sept [1861]. At <http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/ entry-3257>.

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Please note the fundamental difference between demanding a test and

guaranteeing the result. The test might just as well have failed, thus dooming the

theory. Good theories invite a challenge but do not bias the outcome.

It is in principle impossible to prove a negative. If Trotsky did not collaborate

with the Germans and/or Japanese there would be no evidence of his having done so.

Unlike the situation with natural history, however, with human history there arises the

possibility for fabricated or faked evidence. In the present essay we devote a lot of

attention to this problem.

We set out to see whether we could find more evidence that Trotsky had

collaborated with the Germans and Japanese. At a certain point in our research, when we

had gathered a quantity of such evidence, we decided to study it and see what it

amounted to. The present article is the result.

There exists a good deal of evidence concerning clandestine involvement on

Trotsky’s part with oppositional activities within the USSR during the 1930s quite aside

from any collaboration with Germany and Japan. In addition to the testimony by

defendants at the Moscow Trials, we also have archival evidence in the form of

investigative interrogations to confirm such activity. To review all of it is far beyond the

scope of this or any article. The present work concentrates solely on evidence of

Trotsky’s collaboration with German or Japanese governmental or military officials. We

leave the other charges leveled against Trotsky unexamined. The charges of German

and/or Japanese collaboration were the most shocking. They have always been regarded

with far more skepticism.

For the most part we only cite and analyze direct evidence concerning Trotsky

and the Germans or Japanese. This is a very narrow approach that excludes a great deal

of other, corroborating evidence which tends to add credence to the direct evidence of

Trotsky’s guilt in collaborating with the fascists. For example, Nikolai Bukharin heard

details from Karl Radek about Trotsky’s negotiations and agreements with Germany and

Japan. Bukharin never directly communicated with Trotsky or Sedov about this. However,

there is no reason whatever to doubt that Radek did tell him about Trotsky’s collaboration.

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By corroborating Radek’s testimony on this point – Bukharin agrees that Radek did tell

him this, as Radek himself had testified, so Bukharin attests to Radek’s truthfulness here

– Bukharin also tends to indirectly corroborate what Radek said about Trotsky and what

Radek claimed to have gotten at first hand, from Trotsky himself. That is, Bukharin’s

testimony confirms that Radek was telling the truth in one instance, and that increases the

credibility of Radek’s testimony on other matters, including of his contacts with Trotsky

and what Trotsky communicated to him. But here we will examine only Radek’s, not

Bukharin’s testimony. We refer the interested reader to our previous study of Bukharin

(Furr and Bobrov 2007). In a few places we do cite some corroborating evidence, mainly

for the sake of providing context for the direct evidence.

Objectivity And Persuasion

Political prejudice still predominates in the study of Soviet history. Conclusions

that contradict the dominant paradigm are routinely dismissed as the result of bias or

incompetence. Conclusions that cast doubt upon accusations against Stalin or whose

implications tend to make him look either “good” or even less “evil” than the

predominant paradigm holds him to have been, are called “Stalinist.” Any objective study

of the evidence now available is bound to be called “Stalinist” simply because it reaches

conclusions that are politically unacceptable to those who have a strong political bias, be

it anticommunist generally or Trotskyist specifically.

The aim of the present study is to examine the allegations made in the USSR

during the 1930s that Leon Trotsky collaborated with Germany and Japan against the

USSR in the light of the evidence now available. This study is not a “prosecutor’s brief”

against Trotsky. It is not an attempt to prove Trotsky “guilty” of conspiring with the

Germans and Japanese. Nor is it an attempt to “defend” Trotsky against such charges.

We have tried hard to do what an investigator does in the case of a crime in which

he has no parti pris but only wishes to solve the crime. This is what historians who

investigate the more distant past, or the history of countries other than the Soviet Union,

do all the time.

We do wish to persuade the fair-minded, objective reader that we have carried out

a competent, honest investigation. Namely: That we have done the following:

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• collected all the evidence we could find supporting the contention that Trotsky

collaborated with the Germans and Japanese;

• collected all the “negative” evidence – any “alibi” Trotsky or his son and chief

political aide Leon Sedov may have had. We have done this chiefly by paying

serious attention to Trotsky’s testimony at the Dewey Commission hearings in

1937, where he himself laid out his defense;

• studied all this evidence carefully and honestly; and

• drawn our conclusions on the basis of that evidence.

We wish to persuade the objective reader that we have reached our conclusions on the

basis of evidence and its analysis and not on any other basis, such as political bias. We

are NOT out to arraign or “convict” Trotsky. We remain ready to be convinced that

Trotsky did not collaborate with Germany and Japan if, in the future, further evidence is

disclosed indicating that those charges are false.

The Role of Appropriate Skepticism

Throughout this essay we have tried to anticipate the objections of a skeptical

critic. This is no more than any careful, objective researcher should do, and exactly what

both the prosecution and the defense in any criminal investigation do with the evidence

and interpretation.

We have a lengthy discussion of evidence at the beginning of the essay. In the

body of the essay we follow each presentation of evidence with a critical examination. In

the final section subtitled “Conclusion” the reader will find a review and refutation of the

objections a sharp but fair-minded critic might have.

We are aware that there is a subset of readers for whom evidence is irrelevant, for

whom – to put it politely – this is not a matter of evidence but one of belief or loyalty.

We discuss the arguments normally raised from this quarter in the subsection titled

“Objectivity and Denial.” In any historical inquiry as in any criminal case “belief” and

“loyalty” are irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of the hypothesis. By definition, a belief

that is not rationally founded on evidence can’t be dispelled by a sound argument and

evidence.

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However, those who cannot bring themselves to question their preconceived ideas

may nevertheless be provoked by those same prejudices to look especially critically at the

evidence and to find weaknesses in its interpretation that might escape other readers for

whom there is less at stake. This sometimes makes objections from such quarters worthy

of attention. We have tried hard both to anticipate and to deal with such objections in a

satisfactory manner.

Evidence

Before proceeding to cite and study the new archival documents we need to

discuss the question of evidence itself. Whereas “documents” are material objects – in

our case, writing on paper – “evidence” is a relational concept. We are concerned with

investigating an allegation: that Trotsky conspired with German and/or Japanese officials.

We aim to gather and study the evidence that suggests Trotsky acted as alleged.

There is no such thing as absolute evidence. All evidence can be faked. Any

statement – a confession of guilt, a denial of guilt, a claim one has been tortured, a claim

one has not been coerced in any way – may be true or false, an attempt to state the truth

as the speaker (or writer) remembers it, or a deliberate lie. Documents can be forged and,

in the case of Soviet history, often have been. False documents have on occasion been

inserted into archives in order to be “discovered.” Or, it may be alleged that a given

document was found in an archive when it was not. Photographs can be faked.

Eyewitnesses can lie, and in any case eyewitnesses are so often in error that such

evidence is among the least reliable kind. In principle there is no such thing as a

“smoking gun” – evidence that is so clearly genuine and powerful that it cannot be denied.

The problems of identifying, gathering, studying, and drawing correct conclusions

from evidence are similar in criminal investigation and in historical research. This is

especially true when, as in our case, the research is to determine whether a kind of crime

took place in the past. But there are important differences, and it’s vital to be clear about

them.

In a criminal trial the accused has certain rights. The trial has to be finite in length,

after which the accused is either convicted or acquitted for good. The defendant ought to

enjoy the presumption of innocence and the benefit of any reasonable doubt. The

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defendant is entitled to a qualified defender whose sole job it is to interpret all evidence

in a way so as to benefit his client. Meanwhile, the judge and even the prosecution are

supposed to be concerned not just about securing a conviction but also about justice.

Once they are reasonably convinced that the defendant is innocent their duty is to dismiss

the charges and discharge the accused even though they might be able to sway the jury to

convict. These practices are intended to prevent an innocent defendant from an unjust

verdict and penalty.

Historians are in quite a different situation. Dead people have no rights (or

anything else) that need to be defended. Therefore the historian does not have to be

concerned with any presumption of innocence, “reasonable doubt,” and so on. Unlike a

legal verdict no conclusion is final. The historical inquiry need never end. It can, and will,

be taken up again and again as new evidence is discovered or new interpretations of old

evidence are reached. This is in fact what we are doing in the present article. We are

investigating the question of whether Trotsky collaborated with German and Japanese

officials in the light of new evidence, while at the same time reconsidering evidence that

has long been available.

Identifying, locating, gathering, and even studying and interpreting evidence are

skills that can be taught to anyone. The most difficult and rarest skill in historical

research is the discipline of objectivity. In order to reach true conclusions – statements

that are more truthful than other possible statements about a given question – a researcher

must first question and subject to doubt any preconceived ideas she may hold about the

subject under investigation. It is one’s own preconceived ideas and prejudices that are

most likely to sway one into a subjective interpretation of the evidence. Therefore, the

researcher must take special steps to make certain this does not happen.

This can be done. The techniques are known, and widely practiced in the physical

and social sciences. They can be adapted to historical research as well. If such techniques

are not practiced the historian will inevitably be seriously swayed from an objective

understanding of the evidence by her own pre-existing preferences and biases. That will

all but guarantee that her conclusions are false even if she is in possession of the best

evidence and all the skills necessary to analyze it.

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Nowhere is a devotion to objectivity more essential or less in evidence than in the

field of Soviet history of the Stalin period. As it is impossible to discover the truth absent

a dedication to objectivity, this article strives to be objective. Its conclusions will

displease, even outrage, a good many persons who are dedicated not to objectivity and

the truth but to protecting the legend of Trotsky as an honorable revolutionary or to

defending the Cold War – anticommunist paradigm of Soviet history.

Of course we don’t claim to have found all the relevant evidence there is. It is

overwhelmingly likely that there is a great deal more such evidence, since the vast

majority of primary source documents dealing with the Oppositions of the 1930s are still

classified in Russia and the post-Russian states today and are inaccessible to any

researchers. But what we have now is a lot. In our judgment there is more than sufficient

evidence that Trotsky did indeed collaborate with Germany and Japan more or less as the

Soviet government accused him in the 1930s. Why Trotsky may have done so is a

question worthy of consideration. We have added some thoughts about this toward the

end of this essay.

Trotsky’s Telegram to the Soviet Leadership

The first document we want to present is one that illustrates both the promise and

the problems of interpreting documentary evidence.

June 1937 was a time of tremendous crisis for the Soviet leadership. In April

Genrikh Yagoda, Commissar (head) of the NKVD until the previous September, and

Avel’ Enukidze, until recently both a Central Committee member and high-ranking

member of the Soviet government, had begun to confess about their important roles in

plans for a coup d’état against the government. The month of May had begun with an

internal revolt against the Spanish Republican government in which anarchists and

Trotskyists participated. The Soviet leadership knew this revolt had involved some kind

of collaboration between pro-Trotsky forces there and both Francoist and German – Nazi

– intelligence. By the beginning of June eight military officers of the highest ranks

including Mikhail Tukachevsky, one of only five Marshals of the Red Army, had been

arrested and were making confessions of conspiracy with Trotsky and Trotskyists, the

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Rights led by Bukharin, Yagoda and Rykov, and – most ominous of all – with Nazi

Germany and Japan.

On June 2 Nikolai Bukharin suddenly reversed himself and confessed to having

been one of the leaders of this same conspiracy (Furr & Bobrov). That same day Lev M.

Karakhan, a leading Soviet diplomat who at one time had been closely linked to Trotsky,

also confessed.8 Marshal Tukhachevsky and the other military leaders evidently

continued to make further confessions right up until June 9. On June 11 came the trial,

where they confessed once again, and then their execution. Several high-ranking

Bolsheviks and Central Committee members were associated with them.

Before and during the Central Committee Plenum which took place from June 23

to 29 twenty-four of its members and fourteen candidate members were expelled for

conspiracy, espionage, and treasonable activities. In February and March Bukharin,

Rykov and Yagoda had been likewise expelled. Never before had there had been such

wholesale expulsions from the Party’s leading body.

Unquestionably, there was a great deal else that has never been made public. But

these events, particularly the military conspiracy, appeared to constitute the gravest threat

to the security – indeed, the continued existence – of the Soviet Union since the darkest

days of the Civil War.

Trotsky and his son Leon Sedov had been convicted in absentia at the first

Moscow Trial in August 1936.9 At the second Moscow Trial of January 1937 Karl Radek

had explicitly identified Leon Trotsky as the leader of an important anti-Soviet

conspiracy. He had specifically mentioned Spain as a place where Trotsky’s adherents

were dangerous and called on them to turn away from Trotsky. When the “May Days”

revolt in Barcelona broke out on May 3 Radek’s warning seemed prescient. For the

communists, but also for many non-communists who supported the Spanish Republic,

this rebellion in the rear of the Republic appeared to be the same kind of thing the Rights,

Trotskyists and military figures were allegedly plotting for the USSR.

8 Lubianka. Stalin i Glavnoe Upravlenie Gosbezopasnosti NKVD. 1937-1938 (M.: “Materik,” 2004), No. 102, p. 225. Online at <http://www.alexanderyakovlev.org/fond/issues-doc/62056/61084>. 9 They were convicted of “having directly prepared and personally directed the organization in the U.S.S.R. of terroristic acts against the leaders of the C.P.S.U. and the Soviet State.” Report of Court

Proceedings. The Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center. Moscow: People’s Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R., 1936, p. 180.

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On the eve of the June C.C. Plenum Trotsky chose to send a telegram from his

Mexican exile not to Stalin or the Politburo but to the Central Executive Committee, the

highest organ of the Soviet government. In it he directly challenged its members to reject

Stalin’s leadership and turn towards himself.

POLICY IS LEADING TO COMPLETE COLLAPSE INTERNAL AS WELL

AS EXTERNAL STOP ONLY SALVATION IS RADICAL TURN TOWARD

SOVIET DEMOCRACY BEGINNING WITH OPEN REVIEW OF THE LAST

TRIALS STOP ALONG THIS ROAD I OFFER COMPLETE SUPPORT –

TROTSKY10

A postscript to the original publication of this telegram reads as follows:

In June 1937 in Moscow, at the address of the Central Executive Committee

(CEC) which was then formally the highest organ of state power in the USSR a

telegram arrived from L.D. Trotsky in Mexico: [text of telegram]. Of course this

telegram ended up not in the CEC but in the NKVD, whence it was directed to

Stalin as a so-called “special communication.” He wrote on it the following

remark: “Ugly spy.11 Brazen spy of Hitler.” Stalin not only signed his name

under his “sentence,” but gave it to V. Molotov, K. Voroshilov, A. Mikoian, and

A. Zhdanov to sign.12

The late Trotskyist author Vadim Rogovin paraphrased this same article in a footnote:

Trotsky’s telegram ended up not in the CEC but in the NKVD where it was

translated from the English (the only way the Mexican telegraph could accept it

for sending) and sent to Stalin as a so-called “special communication.” Stalin

10 We have used the original English text of the telegram from a facsimile of the telegram itself in the Volkogonov Archive, Library of Congress, Washington DC. At this time international telegrams were normally sent in English; Trotsky sent it from Mexico. The comments of Stalin and his associates are not on the telegram itself but on the Russian translation provided to them along with it. The telegram was evidently first published in Novoye Vremia ! 50 (1994) ". 37. We have put this facsimile and the Russian translation with the remarks of Stalin and his associates on the internet at <http://chss.montclair.edu/ english/furr/research/trotsky_telegram061837.pdf>. 11 Shpionskaia rozha, literally “spy-face”. Rogovin translates it as “mug of a spy.” 12 L.B., “Will there be no more ‘Secrets of the Kremlin’?” Novoe Vremia No. 50, 1994, 37.

Grover Furr


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read the telegram and wrote on it a remark that bears witness to the fact that he

had clearly lost his self-control: “Mug of a spy. Brazen spy of Hitler!” His

signature beneath these words was completed with the signatures of Molotov,

Voroshilov, Mikoian and Zhdanov, which expressed their agreement with

Stalin’s evaluation.13

The anonymous author of the article in Novoe Vremia (see note 10 above) dismissed

Trotsky’s note as a fantasy on Trotsky’s part.

How should we understand Trotsky’s proposal? Could he have possibly supposed

that they would accept his help? Or that in 1937 a turn towards “Soviet

democracy” was possible? One can’t call this irony; it’s more like an illusion.

(As a number of scholars have shown, a “turn towards Soviet democracy” was indeed a

point of struggle in 1937).14

In his critical 1997 study of Trotsky Evgenii Piskun wrote:

This strange document bears witness to the fact that the leader of the Fourth

International hoped that the USSR was going to undergo immense changes in the

near future and that he would return to power again.

But he was wrong this time too. When the June Plenum of the CC had

ended the Party leadership had not changed.15

Rogovin agreed that Trotsky must have believed he had a good chance of coming

to power:

Trotsky was not a person given to taking senseless or impulsive steps. Despite

the fact that the motives of his appeal remain unclear even today, it is natural to

13 Vadim Rogovin. 1937. Stalin’s Year of Terror. Translated by Frederick S. Choate. Oak Park MI: Mehring Books, 1998, p. 487. Chapter 50: The July Plenum of the Central Committee. 14 For the major sources and a summary of them in English see Grover Furr, “Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform”, Parts One and Two, Cultural Logic 2005. At <http://clogic.eserver.org/2005/ 2005.html>. 15 Evgenii E. Piskun. Termador v SSSR. Idei L.D. Trotskogo i sovetskaia deistvitel’nost’ 1920-1980. Riazan’: Russkoe slovo, 1997, 73.

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assume that Trotsky possessed information which showed that the true devotion

to Stalin of the majority of Party and Soviet leaders was in inverse proportion to

their official exclamations of this devotion, and that Stalin’s position was

extremely fragile and unstable. This might have been the source of Trotsky’s

hopes that, under conditions of the Great Terror which was tearing one member

after another from the Party ranks, a consolidation of the leading figures in the

country would be possible which would be aimed at overthrowing Stalin and his

clique. (Rogovin 487)

Rogovin accepted unquestioningly the orthodox Trotskyist position that Trotsky was not

involved in conspiracies with the Germans. This presented him a problem: How to

explain Stalin’s handwritten comment on Trotsky’s telegram? Even Rogovin had to

admit that, since the note was addressed only to his closest, most trusted associates, it

appeared to prove that Stalin and the rest of them did genuinely believe Trotsky was

guilty of conspiring with the Germans. All Rogovin could offer was the following

formulation, which takes us to the heart of our matter:

The document, as well as many other documents of the Politburo, and even the

personal correspondence of its members, show that Stalin and his “closest

comrades-in-arms” expressed themselves in a conventional code which was

designed to give the impression that they believed in the amalgams they were

creating. Otherwise Stalin, who hardly believed in the existence of contacts

between Trotsky and Hitler, would not have written such words in a document

intended only for his most immediate circle. (Rogovin, note to p. 487; emphasis

added)

We now possess additional evidence that Stalin did indeed believe that Trotsky

was plotting with the Germans. Rogovin offers no evidence to the contrary. In addition

we now also have evidence that Trotsky, as well as many others, actually were conspiring

with Germany and Japan. The evidence concerning Trotsky is the subject of this article.

Grover Furr


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Trotsky’s telegram of June 18, 193716 will serve as an introduction both to the new

evidence that has come to light since the end of the USSR and to the problems of and

barriers to understanding what it means.

To our knowledge no one has bothered to put all this evidence together or to re-

examine in light of this new evidence the question of Leon Trotsky’s ties to Japan and

Germany, ties alleged by defendants at the Moscow Trials and by the Soviet government.

Why is this? We think the two very different comments by Piskun and Rogovin suggest

an answer. Rather than being the subject of careful study with an eye to questioning

previous knowledge, the new evidence is being marshaled in defense of old historical

paradigms.

Piskun’s paradigm – that Trotsky was probably preparing for some kind of coup

against the Soviet leadership – has only rarely been heard for many years. Nevertheless,

Piskun reads Trotsky’s telegram through the “lenses” of that paradigm, for the text of the

telegram itself suggests nothing about any expectation of imminent change and return to

power. The most that could be said is that the text is perhaps compatible with such an

expectation. But we could never deduce such an expectation from the text alone. A sober

reading of Trotsky’s telegram might be that it is evidence that Trotsky was hoping for a

return to power in the USSR but nothing more.

Rogovin’s interpretation is even more strained. According to Rogovin Stalin

could not possibly have believed Trotsky was a German spy even though he wrote this on

the telegram and only his closest associates would see it. Rogovin’s paradigm demands

that Stalin had invented the charge that Trotsky was collaborating with the Germans (and

Japanese). If that paradigm is to be preserved, then Stalin must be faking here too. No

objective reading of the text of Trotsky’s telegram and Stalin’s remarks upon it would

reach Rogovin’s conclusions. Furthermore, Rogovin has no evidence to support his

position that Stalin invented the charges against Trotsky. He simply assumes this to be

true.

16 The original telegram seems to be dated June 18, as that date, “18 JUN 1937,” is printed or stamped at the top of the last page. That appears to be the date the telegram was sent.. «06.20 #$%& 1937 '.» is written in small print at the top of the first page of the telegram. That may be the date it was received and translated. Stalin’s note, and the signatures of Molotov, Voroshilov, Mikoian, and Zhdanov appear on the translation of the telegram, to which the telegram itself is appended in the archive. Though the date on this translation, at the far upper left-hand corner, is not legible, it is probably June 20.

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Piskun and Rogovin represent antithetical poles in interpreting both this document

itself and the question of Trotsky’s relationship, or lack thereof, with Germany and Japan.

But charges of collaborating with the intelligence services of the major Axis powers were

alleged not just against Trotsky but also against many of the defendants at the second and

third public Moscow trials of January 1937 and March 1937. Elsewhere we have set forth

a small part of the evidence that Oppositionists did, in fact, have some kind of clandestine

political relationship, aimed at the USSR, with Germany and Japan.17

There is a great deal of such evidence concerning other Oppositionists. The

present work concentrates on evidence concerning Trotsky specifically. We must look for

evidence that such a relationship existed not because we are convinced a priori that one

must have existed but because it is in principle impossible to find evidence of a negative

– e.g. that such a relationship did not exist. If we find no evidence that the Oppositionists

had such a relationship, then the only responsible conclusion would be that they did not

have any – again, barring further evidence to the contrary that may turn up in the future.

This is normal historical procedure in any investigation: only positive evidence “counts.”

This does not mean, however, that any and all “positive evidence” points to one

conclusion only, or is sufficient to sustain any single conclusion.

The present study does conclude that the evidence now at our disposal strongly

supports the existence of collaboration between Trotsky and the Germans and Japanese.

This creates a peculiar problem for us as historians since an article based upon the

evidence – the present article – directly challenges the prevailing consensus on the

Moscow Trials and specifically on Trotsky.

What’s At Stake?

This prevailing consensus is a constituent part of the model, or paradigm, of

Soviet history that is dominant within Russia itself and beyond its borders.

Trotsky and his son Sedov were accused of involvement with the German

Gestapo at the 1936 Moscow Trial and of involvement with the Germans and Japanese at

17 Grover Furr and Vladimir L. Bobrov, “Nikolai Bukharin's First Statement of Confession in the Lubianka.” Cultural Logic 2007. At <http://clogic.eserver.org/2007/Furr_Bobrov.pdf>. This is the English translation of an article and text first published in Russian in the St. Petersburg journal Klio No. 36 (March 2007).

Grover Furr


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both the 1937 and 1938 Moscow Trials. Numerous witnesses at each of these trials

testified that they had direct knowledge of Trotsky’s (Sedov’s) collaboration. These

charges constituted a central feature of the trials. We will examine that testimony in this

article.

The allegation that these charges are false likewise constitutes a central feature of

the dominant paradigm of Soviet history during the Stalin period. Confirmation of the

guilt of Nikolai Bukharin in the crimes to which he confessed guilt has already seriously

undermined what we may briefly term the “anti-Stalin” paradigm of Soviet history.

Confirmation of Trotsky’s involvement with the Germans and Japanese would

corroborate the evidence we already have that the charges were true to which the

Moscow trials defendants confessed themselves guilty.

* * * * *

On the evidence we have Trotsky did in fact collaborate with the Germans and

Japanese. This is consistent with the charges made against Trotsky and his son at the

Moscow trials.

It is not for us to hazard a guess as to what may be the implications of this fact for

Trotskyism itself. Insofar as Trotskyism is a set of political principles that are detachable

from Trotsky the politician it may have few implications. Its implications may be more

far-reaching for those varieties of Trotskyism that base themselves on a cult of respect for

Trotsky the man and are unable to separate him from his ideas.

Trotskyism has already survived the discovery in the early 1980s that Trotsky lied

to the Dewey Commission. As the recent article by Sven-Eric Holmström demonstrates

Trotsky’s lies about the “Hotel Bristol” affair, both to the Dewey Commission and in his

journal Bulletin of the Opposition, are more far-reaching than had previously been proven.

It will be some time before we can discern what if any influence Holmström’s research

will have on Trotsky’s followers. In any case it is for them, not for us, to decide what

those implications may be.

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21

What Do You Mean “Evidence”?

This statement focuses our attention on a central question: What kind of evidence

would we accept? Unless objective criteria are established and then rigorously adhered

to, the researcher will almost certainly “find” what his historical preconceptions, his

historical paradigm, tells him to look for. In doing so he will either ignore or misconstrue

anything that does not fit his preconceived ideas. What a researcher agrees to accept as

evidence, and to exclude as evidence, is too often a reflection of his historical paradigm.

The problem of “acceptable evidence” is simply magnified in the case of a charge of

secret conspiracy.

There are serious problems with any kind of evidence.

• Confessions in or out of court: They might be fabricated, for any of a number

of motives, including currying favor with the prosecution or state; as evidence

that one has “repented”; to shift the blame onto someone else; as a result of

torture or the threat of torture, threats against one’s family, and so on.

• Incrimination by associates: These are open to the same kinds of tampering as

are confessions of the accused.

• Documentary evidence: Documents can be forged. Any state has the technical

means to fabricate documents that will convince anyone except, possibly, an

independent scientific expert who is allowed to use destructive methods of

analysis to test the chemical composition of the ink, molecular analysis of

paper, etc., in order to determine whether the document is genuine. As this is

virtually never permitted in the case of archival documents deemed important,

skilful forgery is a powerful tool.

Documentary evidence can also be destroyed. Russian researchers have told us that

Khrushchev had a great many papers – perhaps amounting to thousands of pages –

removed from archives during his leadership in the USSR.18 Some documents have also

been removed from the “closed” Trotsky Archive at Harvard University.19 No archive is,

or can be, completely secure from such manipulation.

18 E.g. M.Yunge, R. Binner. Kak terror stal “Bol’shim.” Sekretnyi prikaz No.00447 i tekhnologiia ego

ispolneniia. Moscow: AIRO-XX, 2003, 16. 19 This will be discussed in more detail below.

Grover Furr


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Moreover, how likely is it that agreements of espionage and conspiracy would

have been written down in the first place? Anything written down at some point would

surely have been hidden securely or, more likely, destroyed as soon as read. As long as

such written evidence remained it would pose a terrible threat to any conspirator. We can

be certain of the existence of one such conspiracy in Soviet history – that among

members of the Presidium to get rid of Lavrentii Beria – because it succeeded on June 26,

1953. Yet no prior written record of that conspiracy has ever come to light, and no single,

reliable account of it exists even now.

These are just examples. In general, there is no kind of evidence that cannot be

forged or faked. Neither is there any kind of evidence that can, by itself, provide

conclusive proof of any act.

In this essay I assume that the larger the number of individual items of evidence

that are all consistent with a single interpretation the less is the chance that they, and that

interpretation, are the result of some kind of “orchestration” or fabrication according to a

preconceived plan. This should be especially so in the case of documents which were

never intended to be public at all. When combined with evidence from documents that

were never directly related to any prosecution, the likelihood of fabrication becomes very

small indeed. This is similar to what is called “circumstantial evidence” in the legal

system. When there is enough of it, circumstantial evidence is the most powerful

evidence there is.20

Such is the case, I would argue, with Trotsky’s telegram of June 18 1937. As

Rogovin recognized, the most significant thing about this telegram is what Stalin wrote

upon it. But Rogovin’s own conclusion lacks any convincing rationale. No one who was

not already convinced that Trotsky was innocent of collaboration with Germany would

ever suspect that Stalin did not believe the truth of what he wrote to an audience of his

closest associates, remarks never intended to go any further. “Anything is possible”

perhaps – but what is likely? Rogovin would have us believe that Stalin, Molotov,

Mikoian and Zhdanov were “pretending” among themselves that Trotsky was working

20 “Circumstantial evidence can be, and often is much more powerful than direct evidence.” – Robert Precht, a defense attorney in the World Trade Center bombing and director of the Office of Public Service at the University of Michigan Law School, quoted at <http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/1997/jun/06-04-97/news/news3.html>.

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with the Germans even while knowing perfectly well that it was they themselves who had

made this story up. No evidence supports such a conclusion.

If the words on this telegram were the only evidence we had that led us to suspect

the accusations against Trotsky were not fabricated – not by Stalin or to his knowledge, at

least – they would be highly significant. Stalin saw all investigative materials, including

huge quantities of evidence that is either still classified in Russia today or has been

destroyed. However, there is much more evidence that points in this same direction.

“Fabrication” Of Confessions

In discussions such as these, where any questioning of the dominant paradigm is

viewed with distrust and even horror, it is difficult to distinguish the presentation of the

evidence from the act of responding to the anticipated objections to this evidence coming

from that same paradigm. So below we will offer a summary rebuttal to paradigmatic

objections to some of the evidence we present. The details will come later.

The “canonical view” or “dominant paradigm” of Soviet history is that all

defendants in the Moscow Trials were innocent of the charges to which they confessed.

But there is no “canonical view” about how the faking of those confessions might have

been accomplished.

The transcripts of the three Moscow Trials have been available since the 1930s.

According to the dominant paradigm of Soviet history these transcripts are dishonest and

the confessions of the defendants recorded in them are fabrications.

But the term “fabrication” does not have any fixed meaning. No one has cited any

evidence whatsoever that the confessions were not truthful, so no one is in a position to

say anything definite. The charges against the defendants are simply declared to be

“absurd” and the conclusion is drawn that the defendants must have been induced to lie

by some means. “Fabrication” is a word that is broad enough in its meaning to cover any

kind of falsification.

The allegation that the confessions were false, like any other assertion of fact, can

and must be tested in the light of all the other available evidence. Of course this is done

as a matter of course in criminal cases.

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Historians are under a similar obligation to verify the veracity of confessions as

well as of other evidence. We undertake to discharge this responsibility in the present

essay. At the outset we were prepared to find evidence that the confessions of the

defendants and/or the other evidence against them is false. In fact, the opposite appears to

be the case. The evidence now available strongly tends not to disprove but to confirm the

truth of the confessions and other evidence we cite here.

The Issue of Torture

In this essay we devote serious attention to the hypothesis that the defendants in

the Moscow Trials and others who directly or indirectly implicate Trotsky in

collaboration with Germany or Japan may have been induced to make false accusations

by one means or another. Most troubling is the allegation of real or threatened torture.

Specifically, we discuss the “torture” hypothesis in connection with Zinoviev, Ezhov,

Uritsky, and Iakovlev (see below). We examine Col. Alksnis’ belief that the

Tukhachevsky trial defendants were not tortured. At the end of the essay we devote yet

another section of the essay to the subject of torture. We have a great deal of evidence

that the defendants in the Moscow Trials were not tortured or otherwise threatened into

making false confessions.

All interpretations of the Trial testimony, like all interpretations of any evidence,

are hypotheses. “Torture” is one hypothesis. Like any hypothesis, evidence is required

before it becomes a reasonable theory of explanation. In this case there is no such

evidence.

We have adduced the appeals to the Soviet Supreme Court by ten Moscow Trials

defendants. All of them insist that they are guilty. These documents were never intended

to be made public.

Radek stated up front in the 2nd Moscow Trial (January 1937) that it was not the

investigators that tormented him, but he who tormented his investigators. Bukharin said

that “incriminating evidence” (uliki) was what induced him to begin confessing after

three months of silence. Elsewhere we have cited Steven Cohen’s conclusion that

Bukharin was not tortured. We see no reason to repeat Cohen’s reasoning here. Cohen is

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the world’s expert on Bukharin and continues to insist that he was entirely innocent while

admitting that there is no evidence to support that conclusion.

In early 2006 a confession by Mikhail Frinovsky, second-in-command to Nikolai

Ezhov at the NKVD, was published.21 In it Frinovsky admitted that Ezhov and his co-

conspirators, himself included, had tortured and fabricated false charges against a great

many people. But Frinovsky explicitly said that this was not done in the case of the

March 1938 Trial of the “Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites,” the “Bukharin” trial.

In this same confession Frinovsky also explicitly states that Bukharin et al. were

guilty, and that moreover he and Ezhov were part of this Rightist conspiracy too.

Furthermore he states that Bukharin knew Ezhov was involved in this conspiracy and

kept quiet about it at the trial, taking this secret to his death.

Frinovsky said:

The preparation of the trial of Rykov, Bukharin, Krestinsky, Yagoda and others.

An active participant in investigations generally, Ezhov kept himself aloof from

the preparation of this trial. Before the trial took place the face-to-face

confrontations of the suspects, interrogations, and refining, in which Ezhov did

not participate. He spoke for a long time with Yagoda, and that talk concerned, in

the main, of assuring Yagoda that he would not be shot.

Ezhov had conversations several times with Bukharin and Rykov and

also in order to calm them assured them that under no circumstances would they

be shot. Ezhov had one conversation with Bulanov, and began this conversation

in the presence of the investigator and myself, and finished the conversation one

on one, having asked us to leave.

At that moment Bulanov had begun talking about the poisoning of Ezhov.

What the conversation was about Ezhov did not say. When he asked us to enter

again he said: “Behave yourself well at the trial – I will ask that you not be shot.”

After the trial Ezhov always expressed regret about Bulanov. At the time of the

executions Ezhov suggested shooting Bulanov first and he himself did not enter

21 “Spetssoobshchenie L.P. Berii I.V. Stalinu s Prilozheniem Zaiavleniia M.P. Frinovskogo. 13 aprelia 1939 g. In Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD-NKGB-GUKR “Smersh” 1939 - mart 1946. Eds. V.N. Khaustov, V.P. Naumov, N.S. Plotnika. Moscow: “Materik,” 2006. No. 33, pp. 33-50. I have put the original text online at <http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/frinovskyru.html> and an English translation (mine) at <http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/frinovskyeng.html>.

Grover Furr


26

the building where the shootings took place. Here Ezhov unquestionably was

ruled by the necessity of covering up his own ties with the arrested leaders of the

Right who were going into the public trial. [Emphasis added – GF]

In no way did Frinovsky deny torturing and fabricating false confessions against

innocent people. Rather, he contrasted the way Ezhov handled the “Bukharin” trial

defendants with the way he dealt with a great many innocent victims, whom he had

tortured by his “bone-breakers” so that they would sign confessions drafted by Ezhov’s

NKVD men. Ezhov did not use torture against them.

To sum up: Frinovsky confessed to widespread torture, but (a) specifically

exempted the defendants in the 1938 Trial; and (b) specifically stated that Bukharin was,

in fact, guilty. Frinovsky’s confirmation of the guilt of Bukharin and others corroborates

all the other evidence we have concerning Bukharin.

Before its publication in 2006 Frinovsky’s confession had been fraudulently

quoted by historians and by the Soviet Supreme Court itself, suitably expurgated so that it

seemed to prove the innocence, not the guilt, of the 1938 Trial defendants. This was done

in the same manner as Shelepin’s dishonest quotation of Iakir’s letter, which we briefly

examined above. (An article of ours on this subject is pending in Russia.)

No hypothesis is worth anything unless it is supported by evidence. There is no

evidence to support the “torture” hypothesis, and a great deal of evidence against it.

Therefore the “torture” hypothesis must fall.

Other Possible Hypotheses to Account for Bukharin’s Confession

Bukharin’s confessions are important for us both because they illustrate the issues

involved in allegations of torture and because Bukharin explicitly implicates Trotsky.

We’ll discuss his testimony about Trotsky later in the present essay. Here we are

concerned with the “torture” question.

In any trial there are a number of hypotheses aside from the “torture” hypothesis

that may account for a false confession of guilt by a defendant:

• The defendant’s family is threatened.

• The defendant wishes to “punish himself” to atone for past misdeeds.

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• The “Rubashov” explanation made famous in Arthur Koestler’s book

Darkness At Noon – that “the Party demands it,” the Party is history’s

instrument and so history demands it, and so on.

• The defendant has been promised favored treatment by the Prosecution in

return for falsely accusing others.

In Bukharin’s case there is no evidence to support any of these hypotheses.

The main reason defendants confess to crimes of which they are guilty is their

belief that the prosecution has sufficient evidence to convict them of the crime(s) in

question, rendering further denial useless, indeed counterproductive. A defendant decides

to cooperate with the prosecution in hopes of more lenient treatment by the court – of

“getting the best deal he can.” It now seems beyond doubt that this was the reason for

Bukharin’s confession of guilt. At the second Moscow Trial of January 1937 four

defendants – Radek, Sokol’nikov, Arnol’d and Stroilov – who appeared to have

cooperated fully with the prosecution were sentenced to prison instead of execution. Two

of these, Grigory Sokol’nikov and Karl Radek, were the principal defendants. This was a

strong incentive for any defendant for whom further denial seemed hopeless to cooperate.

Frinovsky’s statement now corroborates Bukharin’s own testimony at trial. Bukharin

himself said that “the evidence” was the primary factor motivating his confessions, which

began with his first one on June 2, 1937. Frinovsky testified that Ezhov promised

Bukharin and others that they would not be shot as long as they did not disclose Ezhov’s

own involvement with the conspiracy. Frinovsky does not claim that he actually heard

Ezhov say this. But he does state that Ezhov did not organize any false confessions in this

trial. Frinovsky himself stated that he knew that Bukharin was guilty. And indeed

Bukharin did not mention at his trial that Ezhov was a co-conspirator.

Frinovsky also confirms Bukharin’s guilt as a conspirator known to Ezhov. This

corroborates a great deal of other evidence we now possess, including some confessions

of Yagoda published for the first time in 1997.

Towards the end of this essay we return to the matter of torture in a different way:

to consider the allegations of torture and how they have functioned in the historiography

and mythology of Trotsky’s role, the Moscow Trials, and the history of the Stalin period

generally.

Grover Furr


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Why Did None of Trotsky’s Supporters At The Moscow Trials Defend Trotsky?

None of Trotsky’s longtime and devoted supporters among the Moscow Trial

defendants defended Trotsky or their actions in supporting him. They not only pled guilty

to various crimes, including working with Trotsky; they recanted their former longtime

allegiance to him and condemned him in harsh terms. It may be asked: how is this to be

explained other than by the fabrication of false testimony through torture or some other

means?

In a criminal case we should not think it strange if co-conspirators “fall out” and

denounce one another, as the longtime Troskyists did during their testimony at the public

Moscow trials. Moreover, we should also consider the trial from the viewpoint of the

prosecution, the Stalin government. What was the purpose of having these public, or

“Show,” trials in the first place?

Like any criminal prosecution, of course, the trial was to deter further criminal (in

this case, treasonous) activity and encourage those who suspected such activity to report

it to authorities. But larger motives were doubtless at play as well.

The Soviets were terribly afraid that, if the USSR were seen to have been

weakened by serious conspiracies at the top, some combination of enemy states would

attack them. They also feared that the Western powers, led by France and the U.K.,

would not agree to “collective security,” mutual defense treaties with the USSR against

Nazi Germany. Given the political conjuncture of the mid-1930s it seems safe to assume

that the trials were also aimed to demonstrate to the world that these high-level

conspiracies had been nipped in the bud, that the Soviet government was still in charge,

and that, therefore, Soviet security was not adversely affected.

That these fears were well founded is suggested by the facts that (a) Japan did

indeed attack the USSR – twice, in 1938 and a larger assault in 1939; and (b) the Allies

did refuse to make any mutual defense treaties with the USSR. Rather, they continued to

push Hitler to attack the USSR. The late Alvin D. Coox, the leading expert on Soviet-

Japanese relations during this time, concluded that the Japanese attack on the USSR at

Lake Khasan in 1938 was directly motivated by the testimony of General Genrikh

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29

Liushkov, who defected to Japan in July 1938 and reported that the Red Army was

seriously weakened.22

If we assume that this was the purpose of the “Show Trials” it stands to reason

that the only defendants who would appear in them would be those who would attack

Trotsky and say they were wrong, the USSR was right, and so on.

Why Is There No German or Japanese Evidence Of Trotsky’s Collaboration?

“Most conspiracy theorists don't understand this. But if there really were a C.I.A.

plot, no documents would exist.” (Shane 2009)23

Instructions on concrete organization questions regarding preparation for

underground conditions must be given only verbally. . . . At the very least it

should have been specified that these names and addreses be given strictly

orally. . . .24

In the course of this essay we will show that there is a large amount of mutually-

corroborative evidence of Trotsky’s German-Japanese collaboration from the Soviet side.

In addition we have important evidence from German and Japanese sources of

collaboration by members of the Soviet opposition including some who themselves

claimed to have been working with Trotsky.

But no evidence of German or Japanese collaboration with Trotsky has been

discovered outside the former USSR. There are a number of possible explanations:

• Trotsky never collaborated with the Germans or Japanese. All the Soviet

evidence is fabricated.

If Trotsky did collaborate the following possibilities exist:

• Many of these archives were destroyed during the war.

22 Coox 1, 92; Coox 2, 145. 23 Gerald Posner, “author of an anti-conspiracy account of the Kennedy assassination, on efforts to obtain C.I.A. documents relating to the assassin.” 24 O. Weber. “How Not to Prepare For Underground Conditions of Revolutionary Work.” The Communist

International. July 1, 1932, 417.

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• Nobody has looked – at least, we are not aware anybody has done so and

particularly in the unpublished papers of the German generals allegedly

involved.

• These archives too might have been “purged.”

• There never was an archival evidence of this collaboration. In fact,

conspiratorial information of this kind is typically not written down at all.

We know that the Soviet archives have been purged by Khrushchev, and perhaps by

others. Even though we have had very limited experience working with other archives,

we know of two cases in which archival materials have “disappeared.” In addition the

vast majority of Soviet archives is not open to researchers. Given the evidence that we

have discovered in the relatively few archival documents that have been published to date

it seems likely that further evidence implicating Trotsky may be contained in archives

that are still classified. Later in this essay we briefly discuss the “purging” of the Trotsky

archive at Harvard of incriminating materials.

In countries still extant it is normal to keep intelligence archives secret

indefinitely. This is certainly the case in the USA. We suggest it is logical to suspect the

same thing in the case of Germany and Japan.

There is a great deal of evidence that the military commanders led by Marshal

Mikhail Tukhachevsky did indeed collaborate with the German General Staff. But we

have only indirect confirmation of this from German Archives, and a somewhat more

direct confirmation in one document from the Czech Archives.

In discussing their espionage for Germany several Soviet defendants said they had

dealt directly with German General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord. Rumor, at least, of

this collaboration evidently survived in Hammerstein’s family. Although to our

knowledge no written record of that collaboration exists, it appears that no one has

actually looked for such records.25 Nor has anyone ever undertaken to survey the

surviving papers of the German generals allegedly involved.

But absence of evidence is only “evidence of absence” when evidence should

indeed be present. We believe that the single most likely reason is simply that no one

25 Hans Magnus Enzensberger. Hammerstein oder der Eigensinn. Eine deutsche Geschichte. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2008, pp. 234; 213-215.

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should expect a conspiracy like this to be documented anywhere, ever, much less “in

archives.” The demands of secrecy and security require that such information be

exchanged only by word of mouth.

The lack of archival or in fact of any documentary evidence of the successful

conspiracy against Lavrentii Beria has already been cited. This conspiracy must have

involved at least half a dozen men. Accounts of it by its participants do not agree in

details except in this: it was all planned and carried out through oral communication.

There is no mention of any written communication. What does exist in the archives is the

outline of a speech to be delivered by Malenkov at the Presidium meeting of June 26

1953. It was at this meeting, we know, that Beria was either arrested or possibly even

killed. Malenkov was certainly a party to whatever occurred. Yet Malenkov’s archive

contains only an outline of his speech, according to which Beria was to be removed as

head of the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs, including the internal police force) and

made Minister of the Petroleum Industry.26

Alleged Lack Of Non-Soviet Evidence

As Sven-Eric Holmström discusses and as we too shall discuss more fully below,

the Trotsky archives at Harvard have been purged of evidence that Trotsky supporters

with privileged access to this otherwise-closed archive found embarrassing to Trotsky’s

reputation. The materials purged included, at the very least, further evidence about the

existence of the “Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites” and Trotsky’s correspondence with

supporters within the USSR.

The late Pierre Broué, one of the world’s premier Trotskyist scholars and a person

who enjoyed widespread respect from anticommunist scholars, concluded that this

evidence meant little since it only demonstrated the existence of a bloc in 1932. Broué

assumed that because the only evidence that was not successfully purged from the

archive happened to be from 1932 that must have been the only time the “bloc” existed.

That is, Broué erroneously assumed in his article that there was no bloc after 1932

because there is no evidence in Trotsky’s archive for the bloc after 1932.

26 The outline of Malenkov’s speech is in Lavrentii Beriia. 1953. Stenogramma iiul’skogo plenuma TsK

KPSS i drugie dokumenty. Ed. V. Naumov, IU. Sigachev. Moscow: MDF, 1999, pp. 69-70.

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This ignores the fact that the archive has been purged. It is invalid to assume, as

Broué did, that the “bloc” existed only in 1932 because the only evidence we have for its

existence is from 1932. Had those who “purged” Trotsky’s archive done an even more

thorough job we would not even have this evidence. Yet that would in no way imply that

no evidence of the “bloc” ever existed. Much less would it imply that no “bloc” ever

existed after 1932. “Lack of evidence” – in this case, of the existence of the bloc after

1932 – “is not evidence of lack” – that such evidence never existed and/or never did exist.

If those who “purged” the Harvard Trotsky archive of incriminating documents

had been more thorough they would have also taken the certified mail receipts of

Trotsky’s letters to oppositionists in the USSR and Trotsky’s and van Heijenoort’s notes

about the “bloc of Rights and Trots.” Then what would we now have? We’d have the

Gorbachev-era “rehabilitation” document denying that there ever was such a “bloc,” and

Trotsky’s staunch denial that there ever was such a “bloc.” Plus we’d have the insistence

of the Soviet Prosecutor, Vyshinsky, and the confessions of a number of Moscow Trial

defendants, that there was indeed such a “bloc.”

Therefore Getty’s discovery in the Trotsky archive corroborates the testimony of

the Moscow Trial defendants. It is evidence that they did not lie, since in the few

instances where we can get independent evidence – as here – that evidence supports the

trial defendants’ confessions. Likewise it corroborates the statements of the Prosecutor –

that is, of “Stalin,” in the reductive language of anticommunist writers. Thus the

testimony of the trial defendants and the Soviet prosecutor about the “bloc” and about

Trotsky’s correspondence turns out to have been truthful, while Trotsky’s testimony and

that of the Gorbachev-era Soviet government was false.

This is not direct evidence of any Trotsky collaboration with Germany or Japan.

But it is consistent with such allegations, since it corroborates the testimony of the same

witnesses on a related matter. Trotsky denied collaborating with Axis representatives just

as he denied existence of the “bloc” and contact with his Soviet supporters. Therefore the

lack of evidence in Trotsky’s archive of any contact with the Axis is not evidence that

such evidence was never there.

We do have a little non-Soviet evidence of such collaboration. In February 1937

the Japanese Minister of War, General Hajime Sugiyama, revealed in a meeting that

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Japan was in touch with oppositionists within the USSR who were providing the

Japanese with military intelligence.27

Other examples of non-Soviet evidence attest to the real existence of the

conspiracies alleged by the Stalin government. There is the “Arao telegram,” extant at

least in 1962-63 though never heard from since. We have direct testimony from the

German ambassador to Czechoslovakia that Hitler knew that high-ranking military

figures in the USSR were preparing a coup d’état. This document, in the Czech national

archives, was only discovered in 1987. This document is corroborated by correspondence

found in captured German archives disclosed in 1974 but not recognized until 1988.28

General of the NKVD Genrikh S. Liushkov defected to the Japanese on June 13,

1938. At a press conference prepared by the Japanese he claimed that the alleged

conspiracies in the USSR were faked. But privately Liushkov told the Japanese that

Stalin was convinced there were real conspiracies, including the military conspiracy. He

also confirmed that the conspirators existed and that they were linked with the

Tukhachevsky group through Gamarnik. Liushkov confirmed that the conspirators

wanted to join forces with the Japanese to inflict defeat upon the Soviet military, and that

some of them had been conspiring directly with the Japanese military (Coox).

Therefore, despite frequent allegations to the contrary, we do possess evidence of

the anti-Soviet conspiracies that could not have been fabricated by the Soviets. However,

even if we had no non-Soviet evidence of collaboration between Soviet oppositionists

and Axis representatives that would not mean that no such evidence ever existed. Much

less would it mean that no such collaboration took place, for such collaboration might

well not leave any evidence.

Soviet Evidence

No researcher today, no matter how anti-Soviet, dismisses Soviet evidence just

because it is Soviet. Evidence from Soviet archives is routinely regarded as valid. For

example, later in this essay we examine pretrial testimony of Genrikh Yagoda, Ezhov’s

immediate predecessor as head of the NKVD and defendant at the 1938 Moscow Trial,

27 “Soviet Links Tokyo With ‘Trotskyism.’” New York Times March 2, 1937, p. 5. 28 Our articles on these subjects are awaiting publication in Russia, but the existence of these documents has long been acknowledged by Western and Russian scholars.

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and will show that it is cited unproblematically as genuine by extremely anticommunist

scholars. We’ll examine Yagoda’s testimony below. It includes testimony about Trotsky.

The present authors have published and analyzed Bukharin’s first confession of June 2,

1937. This document is still top-secret in Russia. In it Bukharin directly implicates

Trotsky.

Lengthy Quotations

Much of the text of this article consists of direct quotations from primary sources.

We understand that this greatly increases the size of the article and does nothing for its

readability.

In an article such as this one, however, we cannot possibly do without these

quotations. The primary sources constitute the evidentiary basis for the analysis and

conclusions. Some quotations are from sources that are very hard to obtain, such as the

English versions of the Moscow Trial transcripts. Even more of them are from documents

unobtainable in English. Marshal Budennyi’s letter to Marshal Voroshilov is an archival

document that has never been published in any language and its contents are entirely new

to the scholarly world.

In the age of the Internet there is no reason why any scholar should ever cite

archival or hard-to-obtain materials without making them available to the reader. We

could have put the primary source quotations onto a separate file and inserted hyperlinks

when appropriate, and considered doing so. Doing so, however, would force the reader

either to ignore the evidence or to click back and forth between the document and its

analysis. We feared such a procedure would be distracting to a careful reader and so

decided against it, a decision with which the editors of Cultural Logic agreed.

We urge the reader to study carefully the quotations from the primary sources.

Like any work of scholarship this article stands or falls on the evidence and its analysis.

A Brief Overview of The Evidence

Our aim in this article is to cite and analyze all of the evidence that directly ties

Trotsky to collaboration with Germany or Japan. We follow each citation of evidence

with an analysis of that evidence. No evidence is left to “speak for itself” since all

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evidence may be interpreted in various ways. We have also striven to cite and study

contextual and corroborative evidence, as all analysis of evidence requires.

That there is no “smoking gun,” no absolute evidence, ought to go without saying.

With the exception of the eye-witness evidence all the evidence we cite is circumstantial.

What gives the complex of existing evidence its power is its mutually corroborative, or

reinforcing, character, the sheer quantity of it, and the fact that it comes from different

sources.

Strictly speaking eye-witness evidence is not circumstantial in the same manner

as other evidence. We pay special attention to the testimony of those who claim they

were told by Trotsky himself of his ties with Germany and Japan. This testimony is

mutually corroborative too. Here we examine the extent to which the credibility of the

eye-witnesses can be verified by cross-checking some of the statements they make with

other evidence at our disposal.

By definition one cannot prove a negative. Aside from verbal denials there can be

no evidence that Trotsky did not collaborate with the Germans or Japanese. Therefore

any investigation must search for evidence that he did collaborate. We have tried hard to

find circumstantial, corroborative, or material evidence that supports the contrary

hypothesis: that the confessions of all these people, whether at the Moscow Trials or

otherwise, were “fabricated” and false. This would impugn the evidence that Trotsky did

collaborate, and so represent “negative” evidence. But we have been unsuccessful. We

feel confident in saying that, at this point at least, no such evidence has been discovered.

Given the evidentiary situation the objective conclusion must be that Trotsky

collaborated with the Germans and Japanese. If evidence to the contrary should surface in

the future we must be ready to review and, if necessary, change this conclusion.

Trotsky Lied

The introduction to the Report of the Dewey Commission, which was convened in

1937 to examine the charges against Trotsky, itself states:

If Leon Trotsky is guilty of the acts with which he is charged, no condemnation

can be too severe.

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Trotsky denied working with Germany or Japan, as charged in the 1937 and 1938

Moscow Trial by several of the defendants. But we now know he lied to the very friendly

Dewey Commission in 1937 about other matters far less serious.

On the basis of his research in the Trotsky papers at Houghton Library, Harvard

University, J. Arch Getty pointed out in 1986 that Trotsky had been in written contact

with his followers in the USSR at least in 1932.

At the time of the Moscow show trials, Trotsky denied that he had any

communications with the defendants since his exile in 1929. Yet it is now clear

that in 1932 he sent secret personal letters to former leading oppositionists Karl

Radek, G. Sokol’nikov, E. Preobrazhensky, and others. While the contents of

these letters are unknown, it seems reasonable to believe that they involved an

attempt to persuade the addressees to return to opposition.29

Getty went on to detail another contact Trotsky had, a clandestine communication with

E.S. Gol’tsman, “a former Trotskyist and current Soviet official,” documented in the

same papers.

Either Trotsky himself or one of his secretaries took some pains to conceal these

connections. Concerning the personal letters Getty wrote:

Unlike virtually all Trotsky’s other letters (including even the most sensitive) no

copies of these remain in the Trotsky Papers. It seems likely that they have been

removed from the Papers at some time. Only the certified mail receipts remain.

At his 1937 trial, Karl Radek testified that he had received a letter from Trotsky

containing ‘terrorist instructions’, but we do not know whether this was the letter

in question.30

The noted French Trotskyist scholar Pierre Broué, who also studied these papers and

acknowledged Trotsky’s lies, explains them as an attempt to deny any plausibility to the

“Stalinist” accusations against him at the Moscow Trials, as well as to protect any further

29 J. Arch Getty, “Trotsky in Exile: The Founding of the Fourth International.” Soviet Studies 38, 1 (January, 1986), pp. 27-28. 30 Getty 34, n. 18.

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Trotskyist supporters not yet uncovered in the USSR.31 From Trotsky’s point of view this

made perfect sense. Why give Stalin additional ammunition in their war with him?

But for the historian it means that Trotsky’s denials, not only of the existence of

the bloc, but of any charge, cannot simply be taken at face value. As Getty has pointed

out elsewhere:

The point here is that Trotsky lied. . . . [H]e had good reasons to lie. But what he

said was not the truth. It was not “objective.” Like the Stalinists, Trotsky was

from the pragmatic, utilitarian Bolshevik school that put the needs of the

movement above objective truth.32

We cite this not to “blame” Trotsky for lying. Telling falsehoods is an essential tactic of

clandestine activity. To demand that political actors in life-and-death situations must “tell

the truth” out of some abstract loyalty to an idealist code of conduct would be mere cant.

Rather, the fact that Trotsky lied – proveably in this case, and probably in other cases

where we cannot prove it – ought simply to remind us that we must set aside any denials

on the part of Trotsky, or any Oppositionist.

It is to be expected that persons will lie when necessary to deflect punishment or

blame from themselves. No one pays much attention to denials of guilt on the part of

persons suspected of a crime. In many countries an accused person has the right to lie in

his own defense, though of course at his own peril too. To any investigator and to any

historian as well an accused’s confession of guilt is much more significant than a claim of

innocence. So Trotsky’s claim of innocence means little in itself. However, Trotsky never

confessed. He lied, and “got away with it,” at least insofar as the Dewey Commission

members and its audience were concerned.

We believe that, on the evidence, we can validly conclude that Trotsky lied about

a great deal more. Specifically, we believe the evidence shows that Trotsky was guilty as

charged in the Moscow Trials – that he actually did conspire with Germany and Japan. If

he did so – and we believe the evidence points overwhelmingly in that direction – it is no

wonder that he lied in denying it. Keeping such a thing secret would have been an

31 Pierre Broué, “Trotsky et le bloc des oppositions de 1932.” Cahiers Léon Trotsky 5 (Jan-Mar 1980), 29. 32 Getty, post to H-RUSSIA list Nov. 24 1998. See <http://tinyurl.com/getty-trotsky-lied>.

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elementary sine qua non of such a conspiracy. The Germany and Japanese participants, if

asked about this, would also have denied it. In lying, they would have felt certain that

they were being loyal to their countries and to their military oaths.

Trotsky’s Archive Falsified

We also know that there has been a practice of falsifying what Trotsky did that

extended to the Trotsky papers themselves. Getty has pointed out that the correspondence

between Trotsky and Oppositionists in the USSR has apparently been taken out of the

Trotsky Papers at Harvard at some time before they were opened to researchers in

January 1980.33 Broué and Getty both note that Trotsky secretary Jan van Heijenoort

reminded Trotsky and his son Leon Sedov of his correspondence about the bloc at the

time of the Dewey Commission hearings. As we noted above, Trotsky chose to lie about

this. Van Heijenoort, who did not die until 1986, worked with the Trotsky Papers and was

interviewed by the New York Times about them (NYT Jan. 8, 1980 p. A14). But neither

there nor in his memoirs34 did van Heijenoort ever reveal he had personal knowledge that

Trotsky (and Sedov) had deliberately lied to the Dewey Commission.

Isaac Deutscher was also given special access to the Trotsky Papers by Trotsky’s

widow so he could write his famous three-volume biography of Trotsky. Deutscher did

not reveal the existence of the bloc of Rights and Trotskyites nor of van Heijenoort’s

letter. Yet he had earlier access to the same “closed” archive that Getty studied only

much later. It is logical to conclude that Deutscher saw the same evidence Getty saw and

also knew that Trotsky had lied to the Dewey Commission but chose not to reveal it.

The two most likely persons to have “purged” the Trotsky archives of the

correspondence with his supporters within the USSR are Deutscher and van Heijenoort.

Trotsky’s wife also had access. But at least one very personal letter of Trotsky’s to his

wife remains in the archives – something that his wife might be expected to have

removed.35 In any case, it is clear that van Heijenoort concealed Trotsky’s contacts with

his followers in the USSR. Either van Heijenoort, or Deutscher, or conceivably some

33 Getty 34 n.18. 34 Jan van Heijenoort, With Trotsky in exile : from Prinkipo to Coyoactan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978. 35 See the dispute recorded by Felshtinsky at <http://lib.ru/HISTORY/FELSHTINSKY/f7.txt>. The letter itself is at <http://lib.ru/TROCKIJ/letter.txt>.

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other defender of Trotsky’s legacy with rare privileged access has deliberately falsified

his archive.

This makes one doubly curious as to exactly what was in those letters from

Trotsky to the Oppositionists that have been removed and for which Getty found only the

certified mail receipts. The question remains: What information in those letters to his

followers in the USSR would have been so sensitive that persons loyal to Trotsky felt it

necessary to remove them even while leaving sensitive personal materials alone? The

logical answer is: sensitive political material. But this could not have been mere evidence

that Trotsky was in contact with his followers in the USSR. That evidence still remains in

the Archive.

As Getty says:

Sedov’s address book contained the exile addresses of Trotskyists in the USSR.

Trotsky Papers 15741. The Exile Correspondence section of the Trotsky Papers

contains copies of such letters. (Getty-Trotsky 34 n. 16)

So those of Trotsky’s followers who had access to the Trotsky Papers did not feel that

this material was politically sensitive enough to remove. So what would have been? At

the top of any such list would be: material that confirmed the accusations made against

Trotsky at the Moscow Trials. Such evidence would have irreparably ruined Trotsky’s

reputation, while justifying, in the eyes of many, the repressions of the late 1930s and,

therefore, Stalin. Such evidence would have threatened to cut the foundation out of

Trotskyism.

The “Hotel Bristol”

Dewey Commission witnesses also testified that at least two further statements

made by Moscow Trial defendants were proveably false: that of the “Hotel Bristol” and

that of Piatakov’s secret flight to Oslo. At the August 1936 Trial defendant E.S.

Gol’tsman (“Holtzman” in the English translation) claimed that in November 1932 he

had met Sedov at the Bristol Hotel in Copenhagen. Albert Goldman, Trotsky’s advocate

at the Dewey Commission hearings, said that the Bristol Hotel had burned down in 1917.

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Now, immediately after the trial and during the trial, when the statement, which

the Commissioners can check up on, was made by him, a report came from the

Social-Democratic press in Denmark that there was no such hotel as the Hotel

Bristol in Copenhagen; that there was at one time a hotel by the name of Hotel

Bristol, but that was burned down in 1917. The guide “Baedeker” of 1917,

includes the name of Hotel Bristol. That was the report of the Social-Democratic

press of Denmark which went the rounds throughout the world press.

– Fifth Session

In fact this Hotel Bristol did not “burn down” in 1917 or at any other time but went out of

business in 1917. The building that housed it was sold to an insurance company which

converted it into offices. It is not clear why Goldman got this detail wrong, since the facts

were at least as available to him in 1937 as they are to us today.

The fact that Gol’tsman identified a hotel that was no longer in existence has been

widely accepted as evidence that his testimony was fabricated by the NKVD and was

false in all other respects too. But a recent study by Swedish researcher Sven-Eric

Holmström36 has proven that in 1932 a large sign saying “Bristol” stood immediately

beside the entrance to the hotel in question. The hotel’s own sign, high up on a different

side of the building around the corner from the entrance, was far less visible. It would

have been natural to get the impression that the hotel really was named “Bristol” after the

prominent sign displayed right beside its entrance. As Holmström has demonstrated, it

would have been difficult to get any other impression.

Holmström’s research also provides us with the best evidence that Gol’tsman was

telling the truth. The presumption in the Moscow Trial was that Gol’tsman went to the

Bristol Hotel, as he testified. If the Bristol Hotel in Copenhagen had been destroyed (or

simply gone out of business) in 1917 and never rebuilt then Gol’tsman could not have

gone to it in 1932. This led many to the presumption has been that Gol’tsman had been

instructed – more likely, forced – to say he had gone to this hotel.

36 “New Evidence Concerning the ‘Hotel Bristol’ Question in the First Moscow Trial of 1936,” Cultural

Logic 2008. We are grateful to Mr. Holmström for allowing us to study a pre-publication version of this very important essay. In this section of our essay we are largely summarizing Holmström’s results.

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Holmström convincingly demolishes this conclusion. The NKVD would never

have made up the name of a hotel which had been destroyed in 1917 but by coincidence

was also the name of a café – the café Bristol – that had a large sign adjoining the

entrance to a hotel right across the street from the train station. But, as Holmström shows,

it is just the kind of error Gol’tsman – indeed, anyone – could easily make.

The door of the Grand Hotel Copenhagen was right beside the sign to the Bristol

“Konditori” (pastry shop), which a large sign reading “Bristol.” Holmström has obtained

photographs of this corner made in 1929 and 1931 which demonstrate this fact beyond

any doubt. The only obvious sign near the hotel door was this large sign. The pastry shop

and hotel also had an interior connecting door, and the pastry shop was owned by the

wife of the hotel’s proprietor.

By 1937, when the pastry shop had moved a few doors away, the hotel had put a

prominent neon sign next to the entrance that had previously been right beside the large

“Bristol” sign. As Holmström’s research has shown, the hotel already had a sign – but on

the opposite side of the building. Until 1936, when the pastry shop moved, the large

“Bristol” sign was the only sign anywhere near the hotel entrance, and it was right beside

that entrance.

It would have been natural, perhaps even inevitable, that anyone passing by would

assume that the hotel was named “Bristol.” This may have been acceptable as long as the

pastry shop was adjacent to the hotel entrance. For one thing, both hotel and pastry shop

were owned by the same man. For another, the pastry shop and hotel were connected by

an internal passage. In fact it may well have been that Gol’tsman actually entered the

pastry shop and met Trotsky there, rather than in the hotel lobby.

At or about the same time that the pastry shop moved to a larger space a few

doors down from the hotel, the hotel put a neon sign right by its entrance. Why? The

answer now seems obvious, thanks to Holmström’s work. There was no longer any sign

at or near the hotel entrance, and so no way of knowing where that entrance was.

Until 1931 the Grand Hotel Copenhagen was a pension for long-term residents.

No sign was needed – the residents knew where the entrance was and the pension did not

need to solicit customers on the street. From about 1931 to about 1936 the hotel entrance

was unmarked, but immediately beside it was the large “Bristol” sign for the pastry shop,

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with the pastry shop entrance a few feet away. It would matter little if a hotel client

entered the pastry shop, for he could walk through the interior doorway to the hotel

lobby. He might even buy a pastry and coffee! Only when the pastry shop had moved to

larger quarters did the hotel require some way to indicate its entrance, and that was when

the neon sign went up.

Holmström has also shown that the key Dewey Commission witnesses on the

“Bristol” question, the Field couple, deliberately lied in saying that they had been to the

pastry shop in 1932 and that at that time it was not adjacent to the hotel. In fact it was

adjacent to the hotel in 1932, but had moved by 1937 – the time of the Dewey

Commission hearings.

So Gol’tsman was telling the truth about the “Hotel Bristol.” The error he made –

mistaking the name of the hotel for that of the pastry shop whose sign was right beside

the hotel entrance and that shared an internal passageway with the hotel lobby – must

have been made by a great many people during that time. Furthermore according to

Gol’tsman’s testimony he did not stay the night at the hotel. He only met Sedov there. If

he had stayed there he would have received a bill. That would have had the hotel’s name

on it, and that might have served to impress upon Gol’tsman’s mind that the hotel was

named “Grand Hotel,” not “Bristol.” But by Gol’tsman’s own admission at the trial he

did not stay and so he never received a bill.

Like all hotel patrons during those years Gold’tsman could have used either door.

He could have used the entrance to the hotel, with the large “Bristol” sign right beside it.

Or he could have walked through the internal passageway between the hotel and the

pastry shop and used the pastry shop door. The point is: the NKVD would never have

“fabricated” such a story.

We can’t verify whether Gol’tsman met Trotsky, as he testified. But Holmström

has verified that Gol’tsman told the truth about the hotel. Furthermore we know that

Trotsky was in fact in touch with Gol’tsman and vice versa, as Gol’tsman claimed, since

Getty turned up this information in the Trotsky Papers at Harvard. (Getty 28). The fact

that Gol’tsman was telling the truth about this epistolary contact with Trotsky which can

now be verified, together with Holmström’s research on the “Hotel Bristol” affair, makes

it more likely that Gol’tsman really did meet with Trotsky. That is, if two statements by a

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defendant (Gol’tsman) can be independently verified, it makes his other statements that

cannot be independently verified more credible. By the same token it further erodes

Trotsky’s credibility.

Holmström has also uncovered evidence that suggests that the matter of

Piatakov’s alleged flight to Oslo to meet with Trotsky should be reopened. However that

may be, we now know that Esther Field, Trotsky’s witness before the Dewey

Commission, deliberately lied about the 1932 location of the Bristol Konditorei and the

Grand Hotel Copenhagen. She would surely not have done so without Trotsky’s

permission. Most likely she did it at his request; otherwise how would she know exactly

which lies to tell? Both the Fields were close adherents of Trotsky’s.

Together with the evidence uncovered by Getty and Broué that Trotsky

deliberately lied at the Dewey Commission hearings about the “block of Rights and

Trotskyites,” we now have an established fact. It is not the testimony at the August 1936

Moscow Trial but the testimony by Trotsky and his witnesses at the 1937 Dewey

Commission hearings that has been proven to be false. Furthermore, Trotsky’s denial that

he was involved in conspiring with the Germans and Japanese cannot be accepted as

evidence. This has always been obvious to any objective student. It’s to be expected that,

when accused of a crime, both the innocent and the guilty will claim innocence.

The path is now cleared for us to study the evidence that does exist.

Evidence From The Three Moscow Trials

The testimony of the defendants at the three Moscow “Show” Trials is routinely

dismissed as false. The defendants are said to have been threatened, or tortured, or in

some other way induced to confess to absurd crimes which they could not have

committed. This is all wrong.

There is no evidence worthy of the name that the defendants were threatened, or

tortured, or induced to give false confessions by promises of some kind. Under

Khrushchev, again under Gorbachev and, in fact, right up to this day the official stance of

both Soviet and Russian regimes has been that the defendants’ confessions are false. The

investigative materials, all but a small fraction of which are still classified in Russia

today, have been scoured for any evidence that would discredit the Trials and prove the

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defendants’ confessions were false. But no such evidence has been discovered. For this

reason we can be reasonably confident that no such evidence exists.

In 1992 during the short-lived “glasnost’” period under Eltsin the appeals to the

Soviet Supreme Court of ten of Moscow Trials defendants were published in the

newspaper Izvestiia. All the defendants in question had been sentenced to death on the

basis of their own confessions and the accusations of other defendants. If they were ever

going to retract their confessions and proclaim innocence this was their last chance to do

so. Not one of them did. Every one of them reconfirmed his own guilt.37

Dr. D.D. Pletnev, a minor defendant in the March 1938 Moscow Trial, has been

the subject of numerous articles declaring him the innocent victim of a frameup and

claiming that he proclaimed his innocence while in prison after the trial. But a study of all

these articles and of the fragments of Pletnev’s correspondence that they published shows

this to be false. Pletnev never claimed innocence of the crime he was convicted of at trial.

The articles are full of contradictions and dishonest statements. There is no basis to claim

that Pletnev was framed.38 In the case of a few of the more prominent defendants,

Zinoviev and Bukharin, there is good evidence that they were not threatened or badly

treated.

Most people who disregard the confessions of the defendants at the Moscow

Trials have never studied the transcripts of these trials. They dismiss them because they

have been told that the defendants’ confessions were fabricated. In reality, there is no

evidence that this is so. As we shall see, the evidence given in those confessions is in fact

corroborated by the archival material which is the main subject of this study. And in any

event the confessions of the Moscow Trials defendants must be accorded the same

respect as the rest of the evidence, or as any evidence. It must be identified, collected, and

studied. We have done this below.

A number of the defendants at the Moscow Trials testified that Trotsky was

collaborating with Germany or Japan. Most of these witnesses said that they had been

told of Trotsky’s collaboration by others. But some of the defendants testified that they

37 “Rasskaz o desiati rasstrel’iannykh” (“Story of ten who were shot”), Izvestiia September 2, 1992, p. 3. 38 Furr and Bobrov, Bukharin na plakhe (“Bukharin on the block”), forthcoming.

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had been told of Trotsky’s collaboration personally by Trotsky, personally by Trotsky’s

son Leon Sedov, or in notes or letters from Trotsky or Sedov.

The status of this testimony is, therefore, more direct. In this article we will

concentrate on this first-hand testimony of Trotsky’s collaboration. We will not review

all the indirect or second-hand evidence in detail. We will, however, say something about

this evidence at the end of the article to note how it corroborates the first-hand evidence.

The August 1936 Trial: Ol’berg

In the August 1936 trial of Zinoviev, Kamenev and others the only first-hand

testimony to collaboration between Trotsky and the German government concerns

collaboration with German intelligence. Defendant Valentin Ol’berg claimed that he

obtained from the Gestapo a Honduran passport to get into the USSR with the help of his

brother Paul, a German agent. He further testified that he was given the money to buy it

from the German Trotskyite organization because Sedov had told them to provide it.

Getty discovered evidence in the Trotsky Archive that Trotsky had “safe contacts in

Berlin, Prague, and Istanbul” (Getty 28). Insofar as German Trotskyists did exist,

therefore, the contact Ol’berg alleged could have happened. We can’t say more. The

alleged contacts between Trotskyists and the Gestapo were for the joint purpose of

organizing assassination attempts on Stalin and Voroshilov. There is no testimony at this

trial about any Trotsky contacts with Germans or Japanese for military purposes.

Ol’berg claimed there was systematic collaboration between the Gestapo and

German Trotskyists with Trotsky’s consent. From Prosecutor Vyshinsky’s Opening

Statement:

As the investigation has established, V. Olberg arrived in the U.S.S.R. with the

passport of a citizen of the Republic of Honduras obtained with the aid of the

German Secret Police (Gestapo).

On this point V. Olberg, during examination in the office of the State

Attorney of the U.S.S.R., testified

“. . . Sedov promised to help me to obtain a passport to return to the

U.S.S.R. once more. But I succeeded in obtaining a passport with the

help of my younger brother, Paul Olberg. Thanks to my connections with

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the German police and their agent in Prague, V. P. Tukalevsky, I, by

means of a bribe, obtained the passport of a citizen of the Republic of

Honduras. The mony for the passport – 13,000 Czechoslovakian kronen

– I obtained from Sedov, or rather, from the Trotskyite organization on

Sedov’s instructions.” (Vol. XXI, p. 262)

Re-examined on the question of his connection with the Gestapo, V. Olberg on

July 31 of this year testified:

“Confirming also my testimony of May 9 of this year, I emphasize that

my connection with the Gestapo was not at all an exception, of which

one could speak as of the fall of an individual Trotskyite. It was the line

of the Trotskyites in conformity with the instructions of L. Trotsky given

through Sedov. The connection with the Gestapo followed the line of

organizing terrorism in the U.S.S.R. against the leaders of the C.P.S.U.

and the Soviet Government.”

From the trial transcript:

Then, continues Olberg, I wrote a letter to Sedov in Paris telling him about the

proposal made by the agent of the Gestapo, and asked him to inform me whether

L. D. Trotsky would approve of an arrangement with such an agent. After some

time I received a reply sanctioning my actions, that is to say, my understanding

with Tukalevsky. Sedov wrote saying that the strictest secrecy was necessary,

and that none of the other members of the Trotskyite organization was to be

informed about this understanding. (Pravda August 21 1936, p. 2)

Defendant Natan Lur’e confessed that he had plotted assassinations under the

leadership of Franz Weitz, a Gestapo agent. Lur’e claimed that Weitz had argued that

Trotskyists and the Gestapo should work together for common ends. Lur’e never claimed

that Trotsky or Sedov had themselves asked him to do this. He never claimed to have met

either one of them in person at all.

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Archival Evidence and The 1936 Trial: The July 29, 1936 “Closed Letter”

On July 29 1936, a few weeks before the August trial, the Politburo sent a long,

secret letter to Party organizations all over the USSR. This document was published only

in August 1989, during Mikhail Gorbachev’s short-lived and very partial period of

“openness” (glasnost’) that was supposed to accompany economic “reconstruction”

(perestroika) along capitalist lines. Urging Party organizations to redouble their vigilance

the “letter” contained many quotations from suspects under interrogation. Some of them

ended up as defendants in the trial that took place a few weeks later, but others did not

and were evidently tried separately.

From the interrogation quotations given in this letter we learn a bit more. Dreitser,

later a trial defendant, said he had received a letter from Trotsky in 1934 about the need

to assassinate Stalin and Voroshilov. This letter evidently said nothing about Germans or

Japanese. V. Ol’berg, Frits-David, and K.B. Berman-Yurin testified to direct contact with

Trotsky. Ol’berg claimed direct contact with Sedov as well. This contact too was about

planning assassinations. E. Konstant, a Trotskyist, is quoted as saying that he had

contacted Gestapo agent Weitz, but does not claim that Trotsky had urged him to do

this.39 Therefore there is no evidence in the “Closed Letter” about Trotsky’s working with

the Germans.

Natan Lur’e

In 1992 Lur’e’s post-trial appeal to Mikhail Kalinin for clemency dated August 24,

1936 was published for the first time from a copy in the former Soviet archives. The

appeal was a secret document and thus had no propaganda value. In it N. Lur’e

emphasized the truth of his trial confession. Since this short document has not been

republished since 1992 and has never been translated, we reprint the whole text here:40

39 The letter is available in English translation, with some omissions, in J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov, The Road to Terror. Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999, 250-256. Dreitser’s and Konstant’s remarks are translated; Berman-Yurin’s and Ol’berg’s are omitted. 40 “Rasskaz o desiati rasstreliannykh” (“Story of ten who were shot”), Izvestiia September 2 1992, p. 3. The ten Moscow Trial defendants whose appeals for clemency are reprinted in this article are Kamenev, Smirnov, Zinoviev, N. Lur’e, Pyatakov, Muralov, Bukharin, Rykov, Krestinsky, and Yagoda.

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To the Chairman of the CEC of the USSR Kalinin M.I.

Declaration

By sentence of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court I, Natan

Lazarevich Lur’e, have been sentenced to be shot.

I have committed a most serious crime against the Soviet people. I

wished, according to an assignment of Trotsky, leader of the terrorist center, to

deprive the Soviet people and the whole world proletariat of the leader Stalin and

other leaders of the great communist party. More than once I prepared terrorist

acts against Voroshilov, Stalin, Ordzhonikidze, Kaganovich, and Zhdanov,

having armed myself in order to carry out this plan.

I really did prepare to murder Voroshilov as ordered by Franz Weitz, a

representative of the Gestapo. I wished to carry out these despicable murders

because I had been infected by the poison of Trotskyism during the course of my

long stay in Germany. I only arrived in the USSR for the first time in 1932 and

therefore, ignorant of the immense successes that the party of Lenin and Stalin

had carried out under the leadership of the C. C. of the AUCP(b) I, instructed by

Trotskyist literature, nursed hatred towards the leaders of the party. At my trial I

confessed my guilt in full and kept nothing back from Soviet power. I am a

young surgeon. I am 34 years of age. I am prepared to redeem my very serious

crimes with diligent work, for all the poison of Trotskyism has been completely

rooted out of me.

I ask the CEC of the USSR to spare my life and grant me clemency.

Natan Lazarevich LUR’E

August 24 1936

We will return to this confession below, but note for now a few points about it. N.

Lur’e repeats that he was guilty of planning assassinations of Soviet leaders. He

particularly insists that he took orders from Gestapo man Weitz. His use of the word

“really” (deistvitel’no) suggests that Lur’e wanted to emphasize that his confession to

“collaboration with” or “taking leadership from” the Gestapo was not a metaphor – as

though, say, they were working along similar paths; that he had taken the idea for

assassinations from something Weitz had reportedly said, etc. Lur’e tried to make it as

clear as possible. He actually took orders from the Gestapo.

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Natan Lur’e does not claim at any time that he had been directly in touch with

Trotsky or Sedov. He did not receive the assignment or sanction to engage in “terror” or

to collaborate with the Nazis from them. Ol’berg had claimed to be Trotsky’s “emissary”

in Germany, the leader of Trotskyists in Germany and their illegal contacts with the

USSR. He had met frequently with Leon Sedov. He testified that Trotsky had sent a letter

to Sedov, apparently in 1932, in which Trotsky approved of Sedov’s entrusting the

mission of assassination to Ol’berg.

Assessing The Evidence

Certainty in historical study is basically unattainable. We never have as much

evidence as we would like to have. This is true in jurisprudence and in scientific inquiry

generally.

The only rational, responsible procedure is to study all the evidence we have, and

arrive at a conclusion based on that evidence, or the preponderance of it. If and when

there is evidence “on both sides” of a given question so that it isn’t possible to objectively

state where the preponderance of the evidence lies, we should state as much.

In all cases, conclusions are tentative. If and when more evidence comes to light,

we must be prepared to reconsider all previous evidence and include the new evidence. If

that study warrants we should be prepared to revise or even reverse our previous

conclusions. This is the procedure we must follow here, as in every inquiry.

Either Natan Lur’e prepared to assassinate Voroshilov or he did not. If he did

prepare to assassinate Voroshilov, either he did it on instructions from the Gestapo agent,

or he did it for some other reason or under some other leadership. Once again, either he

did, or he didn’t.

Lur’e’s appeal is consistent with the testimony given at the trial as reported in the

trial transcript, which we have reviewed above. The only additional evidence or

testimony we have in Lur’e’s case is contained in “rehabilitation” materials. The first of

these documents, chronologically speaking, is the “Zapiska” of the Shvernik Commission

prepared for Khrushchev between 1962 and 1963 and, according to its Russian edition,

completed “not later than February 18, 1963.” Aside from repeating information

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contained in the trial transcript it says little about Natan Lur’e. What it does say is not

exculpatory.

For example we read the following:

The former members of the Communist Party of Germany M. Lur’e and N. Lur’e,

who were condemned in the aforesaid case, had in the past shared the views of

the Trotskyite opposition, and in 1930-1931 Ol’berg, who was living in Germany,

did maintain written contact with Trotsky. Then he did arrive in the USSR under

suspicious circumstances. (“Zapiska” 562; emphasis added)

Even though the Shvernik Commission was clearly instructed to find “evidence”

to justify declaring the defendants innocent, in a number of cases it found evidence that

contradicted this conclusion. The statement quoted above suggests that, as in other

passages, those who compiled the Shvernik Report were not willing to completely

suppress all evidence of suspicious activity on the part of the defendants.

The “Zapiska” reports that Stalin played a major role in outlining his theory of the

role of the Trotskyist-Zinovievist bloc in planning the successful assassination of Kirov

and the planned assassinations of himself, Voroshilov, and others (560). It concludes that

no such bloc actually existed, but was a fabrication of the NKVD and/or Stalin. The

Gorbachev-era “rehabilitation” commissions later agreed. The actual “rehabilitation”

decree by the Plenum of the Soviet Supreme Court was evidently issued in June 1988.

We don’t have the text of this decree, but we do have the document from the

rehabilitation commission of the Politburo published in August 1989.41

This statement contains a number of interesting features, a few of which we’ll

consider here. For one thing, parts of it are copied verbatim, or almost so, from the

Shvernik Commission’s “Zapiska” of 1963, twenty-five years earlier. No one could know

this in 1988, since the text of the Shvernik Report was not published until 1993-4. But the

fact of the copying suggests that probably no new study was carried out in 1987-88.

We note two other features of the 1989 document that are significant for our present

investigation:

41 “O Tak Nazyvaemom ‘Antisovetskom Ob” edinennom Trotskistsko-Zinov’evskom Tsentre.” Izvestiia

TsK KPSS 8 (1989), pp. 78-94.

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1. The 1989 document concludes that no bloc or grouping of Zinovievists and

Trotskyists existed.

It has been established therefore that after 1927 the former Trotskyists and

Zinovievists did not carry out any organized struggle against the party, did not

unite with each other either on a terrorist or any other basis, and that the case of

the “United Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center” was fabricated by the

organs of the NKVD upon the direct order and with the direct participation of J.V.

Stalin. (94)

We know that this is not true. Such a bloc did in fact exist, and its existence has been

proven from documents in Trotsky’s own archive at Harvard University. Arch Getty put

it this way in his pathbreaking book published in 1985:

Although Trotsky later denied that he had any communications with former

followers in the USSR since his exile in 1929, it is clear that he did. In the first

three months of 1932 he sent secret letters to former oppositionists Radek,

Sokolnikov, Preobrazhenskii, and others. Although the contents of these letters

are unknown, it seems reasonable to believe that they involved an attempt to

persuade the addresees to return to opposition.

Sometime in October of 1932, E.S. Gol’tsman (a Soviet official and

former Trotskyist) met Sedov in Berlin and gave him an internal memorandum

on Soviet economic output. This memorandum was published in the Biulleten’

the following month under the title “The Economic Situation of the Soviet

Union.” It seems, though, that Gol’tsman brought Sedov something else: a

proposal from Left Oppositionists in the USSR for the formation of a united

opposition bloc. The proposed bloc was to include Trotskyists, Zinovievists,

members of the Lominadze group, and others. The proposal came from

“Kolokolnikov” – the code name of Ivan Smirnov. (Getty, Origins 119)

After further discussion of what Trotsky may have thought about the bloc as

revealed in his Harvard papers Getty continues:

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It is clear, then, that Trotsky did have a clandestine organization inside the USSR

in this period and that he maintained communication with it. It is equally clear

that a united oppositional bloc was formed in 1932. . . . From the available

evidence, it seems that Trotsky envisioned no “terrorist” role for the bloc,

although his call for a “new political revolution” to remove “the cadres, the

bureaucracy” might well have been so interpreted in Moscow. There is also

reason to believe that after the decapitation of the bloc through the removal of

Zinoviev, Kamenev, Smirnov, and others the organization comprised mainly

lower-level less prominent oppositionists: followers of Zinoviev, with whom

Trotsky attempted to maintain direct contact.

It is equally probable that the NKVD knew about the bloc. Trotsky’s and

Sedov’s staffs were thoroughly infiltrated, and Sedov’s closest collaborator in

1936, Mark Zborowski, is said to have been an NKVD agent. In 1936, the 1932

bloc would be interpreted by the NKVD as a terrorist plot and would form the

original pretext for Ezhov’s campaign to destroy the former opposition. Smirnov,

Gol’tsman, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Trotsky (in absentia) would be the

defendants at the 1936 show trial, and the 1932 events would form the evidential

basis for their prosecution. (Getty, Origins 121)

If the existence of the bloc between Zinovievists and Trotskyists from 1932 on

can be demonstrated by Trotsky’s own documents and, moreover, was known as early as

1985, then we can be certain that it could have been demonstrated in 1988 with the

investigative materials from the 1936 trial that were available to the Party and

“rehabilitation” investigators in 1987-88. Even if, somehow, such materials were not

available in Russia, the Gorbachev-era commissions could have simply concluded that

the existence of such a bloc remained unproven.

And, of course, they could have referred to the research by Getty and also by

famous Trotskyist scholar Pierre Broué, who had also studied the Trotsky archive at

Harvard and recognized in print that the bloc really did exist, and that Trotsky, in denying

this, had lied. We have shown elsewhere that both the Prosecutor’s “Protest” (= appeal)

and the Decree of the Plenum of the Soviet Supreme Court in the case of Bukharin, the

latter document dated June 4, 1988 and still secret, deliberately falsify one of the key

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pieces of evidence they cite, and in the most serious manner.42 The fact that in the present

case too the Gorbachev-era commission denied that such a bloc had existed is further

proof that we cannot assume that the conclusions of these commissions are either honest

or truthful.

2. In addition we have known since 1971 that Bukharin and his group were

planning to assassinate Stalin in 1928 and 1929. Bukharin’s close friend Jules Humbert-

Droz, a Swiss communist active in the Comintern, broke with Bukharin over this and

wrote about it in his memoir published in 1971. Writing in Switzerland and forty years

after the event Humbert-Droz had no reason to lie about this. This memoir has been

ignored by all Cold-War writers on Bukharin, beginning with Stephen Cohen’s prize-

winning biography published in 1973.43

We are left with strong evidence that Nathan Lur’e’s confession and appeal were

genuine despite the Gorbachev-era “rehabilitation” report that declared all the defendants

to have been falsely accused.

Zinoviev’s Letters and Appeal

The 1989 document makes the claim that “illegal methods of pressure”

(nezakonnye mery vozdeistviia) were used against the defendants to obtain confessions.

But nowhere does it support this serious accusation with any evidence. The document

also refers to “moral pressure.” In 1956 Safonova, a witness for the prosecution at the

1936 trial and wife of leading Trotsky supporter I.N. Smirnov, testified that she had

agreed to give false testimony for three reasons: “Moral pressure”; threats against her

family; and a desire to confess “in the interests of the Party.”

She (Safonova) states that during the interrogations the NKVD workers

employed methods of moral pressure, demanding confessions to criminal

activities (that were) supposedly essential in the interests of the party.

(Rehabilitation I, 86)

42 Furr and Bobrov, Bukharin na plakhe, forthcoming. 43 Jules Humbert-Droz, De Lénin à Staline, Dix Ans Au Service de L’ Internationale Communiste 1921-31 (Neuchâtel: A la Baconnière, 1971) 379-80. For further discussion see Furr and Bobrov, “Nikolai Bukharin's First Statement of Confession in the Lubianka.”

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The document never discloses what exactly “moral pressure” is. Though this

sentence seems to hint that defendants were asked to confess to things they never did “for

the good of the Party,” this is never directly asserted. Someone who, by her own

admission, gave false testimony once “for the good of the Party” may do it again. There

is no way to know whether it may have been her testimony in 1956 to Khrushchev’s

“rehabilitators” that was the false testimony given “for the good of the Party.”

The 1989 “rehabilitation” document itself gives the lie to the charge of torture – if

that’s what “illegal methods of pressure” means. It quotes Zinoviev himself as saying that

his treatment has been good.

May 6 1935. If I could only hope that sometime I might be granted to erase my

guilt, if only in a small degree. In prison I am treated humanely, I receive medical

treatment, etc. But I am old, I am shaken. . . . (Rehabilitation I, 90)

Strangely, given the political tendency of the “rehabilitation” document, Zinoviev

is quoted as hoping that his “guilt” will be forgiven and declares that he is “no longer an

enemy” (ia bol’she ne vrag, 89). Zinoviev is quoted in this “rehabilitation” document as

having written this phrase twice. These documents by Zinoviev are still secret in Russia.

But it seems that Zinoviev never claimed he was innocent in them, or those passages

would surely have been published. Instead, Zinoviev laments his guilt in several passages,

although the only published excerpts never make it clear what acts Zinoviev is

proclaiming his guilt of.

Getty is the most recent – indeed at this writing, the only – scholar to have gained

access to, studied, and published concerning the pre-trial evidence against the 1936 Trial

defendants. Getty summarized what he found as follows:

By 23 July [1936], Kamenev was admitting membership in a

counterrevolutionary center that planned terror, but he denied being one of the

organizers; he implicated Zinoviev as being closer to the matter. Three days later

Zinoviev was confronted by one of his followers, Karev, who directly accused

him. Zinoviev asked that the interrogation be stopped because he wanted to make

a statement that, in the event, amounted to a full confession of organizing

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assassination and terror. Shortly thereafer, he submitted to his interrogators a

540-page manuscript he had written in prison. In “A Deserved Sentence” he

wrote,

“There is no question about it . . . It is a fact. Whoever plays with the

idea of ‘opposition’ to the socialist state plays with the idea of

counterrevolutionary terror. . . . Before each who finds himself in my

position this question stands in sharp relief. If tomorrow war comes – it

stands yet a million times sharper and bigger. And for myself this

queston in prison for a long time is irreversibly decided. Rise from the

dead! Be born again as a Bolshevik! Finish your human days conscious

of your guilt before the part! Do everything in order to erase this guilt.”44

Furthermore, we now have Zinoviev’s appeal of his death sentence, published in the

same issue of Izvestiia as that of Natan Lur’e. In it he makes the same statement right

after a renewed confession of his guilt:

I have told the proletarian court everything about the crimes I have committed

against the Party and Soviet authority. They are known to the Presidium of the

CEC.

I beg that you believe me, that I am no longer an enemy. . . .

Zinoviev’s insistance of his guilt and of the truth of his testimony at trial, his

private communication assuring the authorities that he is being treated humanely, and

Safonova’s inability – it can’t be called anything else – to lie convincingly to support the

charge that the defendants had been tortured, plus the proof that the “rehabilitation”

document of the defendants in the 1936 trial makes the demonstrably false statements as

outlined above, are all consistent with the hypothesis that the charges and testimony at

the 1936 Trial were not fabricated or obtained by torture. In this they serve to corroborate

44 J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov, Yezhov. The Rise of Stalin’s “Iron Fist.” New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008, p. 191. Zinov’ev’s 540-page confession “Zasluzhennyi prigovor” in two parts has recently been declassified as a part of Ezhov’s file. The archival identifiers of this document are the same as those cited by Getty. See <http://www.rusarchives.ru/secret/bul5/70.shtml>. At this writing it appears that Getty is the only scholar to mention this material.

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Ol’berg’s testimony concerning Trotsky’s and Sedov’s approving his work with Nazi

intelligence.

Archival Evidence and Sedov’s Red Book

In October 1936, after the First Moscow Trial that August, Leon Sedov published

The Red Book on the Moscow Trials in French. We have already discussed how Trotsky

lied to the Dewey Commission; we also note that Sedov failed to tell the truth in this

book. In Chapter 9 he wrote:

Of course the Russian Bolshevik-Leninists didn’t enter into my kind of a bloc

with a single of one these groups.

And,

The Left Opposition was always an intransigent opponent of behind-the scenes

combinations and agreements. For it, the question of a bloc could only consist of

an open political act in full view of the masses, based on its political platform.

The history of the 13-year struggle of the Left Opposition is proof of that. (Sedov

Ch.9 n. 41)

We have pointed out above that Getty has shown that Trotsky both knew of and

approved the bloc but lied about this to the Dewey Commission. Therefore, Sedov is

lying here. Trotskyist researcher Pierre Broué recognized this too. After quoting Sedov’s

denial that any bloc existed Broué wrote:

Ce texte, écrit au lendemain du premier procès de Moscou, est en totale

contradiction avec le document à l’encre sympathique de 1932 de la main de

Sedov attestant l’existence du “bloc” et des pourparlers qu’il mène avec les

“trotskyists” d’U.R.S.S., avec la lettre de Trotsky approvant la constitution du

“bloc” en tant qu’alliance et non fusion, avec les commentaires de Trotsky cités

plus haus (95). (Broué 29)

[This text, written right after the first Moscow trial, stands in complete

contradiction to the 1932 document in secret ink in Sedov’s handwriting and that

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Above: Trotsky with his son, Leon Sevdov. The Swedish text in the upper left states, “A glimpse behind the curtains. No contact for many years between Trotsky and the accused.”

attests to the existence of the “bloc” and of the negotiations he was carrying on

with the “Trotskyists” in the USSR; with Trotsky’s letter approving the

formation of the “bloc” as an alliance, not a unification; and with the comments

of Trotsky cited above.]

But Broué’s objectivity deserts him when in the next paragraph he writes:

A quoi eût servi en 1936 de reconnaître l’existence d’un bloc éphémère en 1932?

[What would have been the point in 1936 of admitting the existence of an

ephemeral bloc in 1932?]

In truth Broué did not know that the

bloc was “ephemeral,” or that it had existed

only in 1932. To be sure, the only evidence of

the bloc that remains in the Harvard Trotsky

archive is from 1932. But the archive has been

purged! Neither Broué nor anyone else has any

way of knowing what evidence once existed or

how long the bloc lasted. Evidently Broué was

assuming, believing, even hoping, that it had

been ephemeral – for the sake of Trotsky’s and

Sedov’s reputations.

Sedov also wrote “The author of these

lines keeps himself apart from active politics”

(Foreword to the French Edition). We know

that is false too. Sedov was assiduously aiding his father’s political work long before

1936. Getty discovered materials in the Harvard Trotsky Archive indicating that while he

lived in Germany Sedov helped his father maintain contact with persons passing in and

out of the USSR. As Sedov had moved to Paris from Berlin just before Hitler seized

power in 1933 this means his political activity dated from before that time. According to

materials in the former Soviet archives Mark Zborowski, the NKVD agent who became

Sedov’s confidant, reported to his handlers that Sedov had proposed in June 1936 he go

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to the USSR to do illegal Trotskyist work (Zborowski refused). Zborowski was Sedov’s

assistant in the writing of The Red Book.45

“No one lies when the truth is on his side.” That Trotsky had something to hide is

the inescapable conclusion. Furthermore, Trotsky’s and Sedov’s deliberate lying in their

attempts to refute the charges made against them at the 1936 Trial not only undermine

their own credibility. They are consistent with the hypothesis that the testimony at the

1936 trial was basically accurate. The archival documents analyzed above are also

consistent with this hypothesis.

The January 1937 Trial: Piatakov, Radek, Sokol’nikov, Shestov, Romm

In the January 1937 Trial defendants Piatakov, Radek, Sokol’nikov, and Shestov

all testified to having been given explicit instructions by Trotsky himself concerning

collaboration by either Germany or Japan. We’ll briefly review that here.

Piatakov

The espionage activities of the Trotskyites on behalf of the German intelligence

service were covered up in a number of cases by their connections with certain

German firms.

The investigation in the present case has established that an agreement

was concluded between L. Trotsky and certain German / 16 / firms by virtue of

which these firms financed the Trotskyites from a fund formed by raising the

price of goods imported into the U.S.S.R. from Germany.

On this point the accused Pyatakov, referring to his conversation with

Trotsky’s son, L. L. Sedov, now in emigration, testified:

“. . . Sedov conveyed to me Trotsky’s instructions to try and place as

many orders as possible with the firms Demag and Borsig, with whose

representatives Trotsky has connections.

45 J. Arch Getty, “Trotsky in Exile: The Founding of the Fourth International.” Soviet Studies 38, 1 (January, 1986), 27; Victor Serge, “Obituary: Leon Sedov,” originally published February 21, 1938, at <http://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1938/02/sedov.htm>; Zborowski report, Volkogonov Archive; John Costello and Oleg Tsarev, Deadly Illusions (NY: Crown, 1993), 282. Tsarev, a KGB officer, obtained privileged access to Trotsky’s files in former Soviet archives that have since been reclassified.

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“You, added Sedov, will have to pay higher prices, but this money will

go for our work.” (Vol. I, p. 227) (1937 Trial 15-16)

. . .

Sedov said that only one thing was required of me, namely, that I should

place as many orders as possible with two German firms, Borsig and Demag, and

that he, Sedov, would arrange to receive the necessary sums from them, bearing

in mind that I would not be particularly exacting as to prices. If this were

deciphered it was clear that the additions to prices that would be made on the

Soviet orders would pass wholly or in part into Trotsky’s hands for his counter-

revolutionary purposes. There the second conversation ended. (26-27)

. . . I recall that Trotsky said in this directive that without the necessary

support from foreign states, a government of the bloc could neither come to

power nor hold power. It was therefore a question of arriving at the necessary

preliminary agreement with the most aggressive foreign states, like Germany and

Japan, and that he, Trotsky, on his part had already taken the necessary steps in

establishing contacts both with the Japanese and the German governments. (53)

. . . In connection with the international question Trotsky very

emphatically insisted on the necessity of preparing diversionist cadres. He

rebuked us for not engaging energetically enough in diversive, wrecking46 and

terrorist activities.

He told me that he had come to an absolutely definite agreement with the

fascist German government and with the Japanese government that they would

adopt a favourable attitude in the event of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc coming

to power. But, he added, it went without saying that such a favourable attitude

was not due to any particular love these governments cherished for the

Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc. It simply proceeded from the real interests of the

fascist governments and from what we had promised to do for them if we came

to power. (63-64)

. . .

Pyatakov: Here I must first make one explanation. Trotsky again said that from

this standpoint, too, from the standpoint of the negotiations he was conducting

and of what he had already achieved, it was extremely important to build up an

46 For the word “wrecking” it’s best to substitute “sabotage.” “Wrecking” is a clumsy translation that makes the original sound forced. The Russian word is !"#$%&#'()&!*, from “vred” = “harm.”

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active, concrete and real force. He then told me that he had conducted rather

lengthy negotiations with the Vice-Chairman of the German National-Socialist

Party – Hess. It is true I cannot say whether there is an agreement signed by him,

or whether there is only an understanding, but Trotsky put it to me as though an

agreement existed, one which it is true still had to be given definite shape by

certain other persons, of whom I shall speak in camera. (64)

. . .

First, the German fascists promise to adopt a favourable attitude towards the

Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc and to support it if it comes to power, either in time

of war, or before a war, should it succeed in doing so. But in return the fascists

are to receive the following compensation: a general favourable attitude towards

German interest and towards the German government on all questions of

international policy; certain territorial concessions would have to be made, and

these territorial concessions have been defined – in particular, mention was made

of territorial concessions in a veiled form which were called “not resisting

Ukrainian national-bourgeois forces in the event of their self-determination.”

Vyshinsky: What does that mean?

Pyatakov: It means in a veiled form what Radek spoke about here: should the

Germans set up their Ukrainian government, ruling the Ukraine not through their

German Governor-General but perhaps through a hetman – at any rate, should

the Germans “self-determine” the Ukraine – the Trotskyist-Zinovievite bloc will

not oppose it. Actually, this meant the beginning of the dismemberment of the

Soviet Union. (64)

. . .

Vyshinsky: And what about diversive acts in case of war?

Pyatakov: That was the last point. . . . In the event of military attack the

destructive forces of the Trotskyite organizations which would act within the

country must be co-ordinated with the forces from without acting under the

guidance of German fascism. The diversive and sabotage activity which is being

conducted by the Trotskyite-Zinovievite organization within the Soviet Union

must be carried out under the instuctions of Trotsky, which are to be agreed upon

with the German General Staff. (65)

. . .

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Radek: . . .The third point that emerged from Trotsky’s conversation with

Pyatakov was that Germany demanded complete freedom of action for the

advance of Germany to the Balkan and Danube countries. This is also a very

important fact.

Vyshinsky (To Pyatakov): Did you say that? Do you confirm that?

Pyatakov: Yes. Radek is relating it very exactly. It is all quite true. (445)

Radek

Radek: This was in May 1934. In the autumn of 1934, at a diplomatic reception, a

diplomatic representative of a Central European country who was known to me,

sat down beside me and started a conversation. He said (speaking German): “. . .

Our leaders” (he said that more explicitly) “know that Mr. Trotsky is striving for

a rapprochement with Germany. Our leader wants to know, what does this idea

of Mr. Trotsky’s signify? Perhaps it is the idea of an émigré who sleeps badly?

Who is behind these ideas?”

It was clear that I was being asked about the attitude of the bloc. . . . I

told him that the realist politicians in the U.S.S.R. understand the significance of

a German-Soviet rapprochement and are prepared to make the necessary

concessions to achieve this rapprochement. This representative understood that

since I was speaking about realist politicians it meant that there were realist

politicians and unrealist politicians in the U.S.S.R.: the realist politicians were

the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc. And he also understood that what I meant was: if

the bloc comes into power it will make concessions in order to bring about a

rapprochement with your government and the country which it represents. (108-

109)

. . .

Radek: . . . Several months later, approximately, November 1935, at one of the

regular diplomatic receptions, the military representative of that country. . . .

The President: Do not mention his name or the country.

Radek: . . . approached me and began to complain about the complete change of

atmosphere between the two countries. After the first few words he said that

during Mr. Trotsky’s time the relations between the armies of the two countries

were better.

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He went on to say that Trotsky had remained true to his old opinion

about the need for Soviet-German friendship. After speaking in this strain for a

little while longer he began to press me hard as one who had formerly pursued

the Rappalo47 line. I replied to this by uttering the same formula which I had

uttered when I was first sounded, namely, that the realist politicians of the

U.S.S.R. appreciate the significance of Soviet-German friendship and are

prepared to make the necessary concessions in order to ensure this friendship. To

this he replied that we ought at last to get together somehow and jointly discuss

the details, definitely, about ways of reaching a rapprochement. (444)

. . .

Radek: As regards Japan, we were told she must not only be given Sakhalin oil

but be guaranteed oil in the event of a war with the U.S.A. It was stated that no

obstacles must be raised to the conquest of China by Japanese imperialism.

Vyshinsky: And as regards the Danube countries?

Radek: As regards the Danube and Balkan countries, Trotsky said in his letter

that German fascism was expanding and we should do nothing to prevent this.

The point was, of course, to sever any of our relations with Czechoslovakia

which would have contributed to the defense of that country. (115-116)

. . .

And, finally, after receiving Trotsky’s directives in 1934, I sent him the

reply of the centre, and added in my own name that I agreed that the ground

should be sounded, but that he should not bind himself, because the situation

might change. I suggested that the negotiations should be conducted by Putna,48

who had connections with leading Japanese and German military circles. And

Trotsky replied: “We shall not bind ourselves without your knowledge, we shall

make no decisions.” For a whole year he was silent. And at the end of that year

he confronted us with the accomplished fact of his agreement. You will

understand that it was not any virtue on my part that I rebelled against this. But it

is a fact for you to understand. (545)

47 In 1922 Soviet Russia and Germany signed a treaty at Rapallo that provided for economic and especially for secret military collaboration. 48 Corps Commander Vitovt Kazimirovich Putna was the Soviet military attaché to Great Britain when he was named by one or more defendants at the August 1936 Moscow Trial, whereupon he was recalled and arrested. In 1937 he confessed to conspiring with other military leaders and was tried and executed in what has become known as the “Tukhachevsky Affair.”

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And, finally, when Pyatakov returned from abroad, he casually remarked

when speaking of the conversation with Trotsky that Trotsky had told him that

cadres of people were being formed who had not been corrupted by the Stalin

leadership. But when I read about Olberg and asked others whether they had

known of the existence of Olberg, and none of them had heard about him, it

became clear to me that in addition to the cadres who had passed through his

school, Trotsky was organizing agents who had passed through the school of

German fascism. (548)

Shestov

During my meeting with Sedov I asked him what our leader, Trotsky, thought,

what were the specific tasks he placed before us Trotskyites. Sedov began by

saying that it was no use sitting and whistling for fair weather; we must proceed

with all forces and means at our disposal to an active policy of discrediting

Stalin’s leadership and Stalin’s policy.

Further, Sedov said that his father held that the only correct way, a

difficult one but a sure one, was forcibly to remove Stalin and the leaders of the

government by means of terrorism. . . .

Seeing that I was being influenced by his words, he switched the

conversation to a new subject. He asked me whether I knew any of the directors

of German firms, Dehlmann in particular. I told him that I remembered such a

name, that he was a director of the firm of Fröhlich-Klüpfel-Dehlmann. This firm

was rendering technical assistance, under a contract, in sinking mines in the

Kuzbas. Sedov advised me to get in touch with that firm and make the

acquaintance of Herr Dehlmann.

I asked him why I should get in touch with him. He said that this firm

was of help in sending mail to the Soviet Union. I then said: “Are you advising

me to make a deal with the firm?” He said: “What’s terrible about that? You

must understand that if they are doing us a favour why should not we do them a

favour and furnish them with certain information.”

I said: “You are simply proposing that I should become a spy.” He

shrugged his shoulders and said: “It is absurd to use words like that. In a fight it

is unreasonable to be as squeamish as that. . . . I met Smirnov about the middle of

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July and he asked me bluntly: “Well, how is your mood?” I told him that I had no

personal mood, but I did as our leader Trotsky taught us – stand at attention and

wait for orders. . . . I detained him and ask: But Ivan Nikitich, Sedov ordered me

to establish connections with the firm of Fröhlich-Klüpfel-Dehlmann . . . that was

engaged in espionage and diversive work in the Kuzbas. In that case, I said, I will

be a spy and a diversionist. To this he replied: Stop slinging big words like “spy”

and “diversionist” about. . . . He said: What do you find terrible in enlisting

German diversionists for this work? . . . He insisted that there was no other way.

After this conversation I consented to establish connection with this firm. (235-

236)

Romm

Romm testified that he had met with Sedov and Trotsky personally and passed

five messages to and from them and Radek. We reproduce here only his account of his

face-to-face meeting with Sedov.

Vyshinsky: Tell us how you received the letter from Trotsky, what commission

you were given, and how you carried out that commission.

Romm: . . . In the summer of 1931, in passing through Berlin, I met Putna who

offered to put me in touch with Sedov. I met Sedov and in reply to his question as

to whether I was prepared, if necessary, to serve as liaison man with Radek, I

consented and gave him my addresses in Paris and Geneva.

A few days before my departure for Geneva, while in Paris, I received a

letter posted in Paris, containing a short note from Sedov asking me to convey a

letter enclosed in the envelope to Radek. I took this letter with me to Geneva and

handed it to Radek when I met him. (137-138)

Romm seems to have functioned mainly as a courrier. His talks with Trotsky and

Sedov touched on Trotsky’s plan for using his forces to guarantee the defeat of the USSR

in a war with Germany in order to facilitate his return to power. Romm said he met with

Trotsky in person in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris at the end of July 1933.

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Vyshinsky: For what purpose did Trotsky meet you?

Romm: As far as I could understand, in order verbally to confirm the instructions

contained in the letter I was taking to Moscow. He started the conversation with

the question of creating the parallel centre. He said there was a danger in the

predominance of the Zinovievites, but that the danger would be great only if the

Trotskyites were not sufficiently active. He agreed with the idea of the parallel

centre, but only on the imperative condition that the bloc with the Zinovievites

was preserved and also on the condition that the parallel centre shall not be

inactive but shall actively engage in gathering around itself the most stalwart

cadres. Then he went on to say that not only terrorism, but sabotage activities in

industry, and in the national economy in general, were assuming special

significance. He said that, apparently, there was still wavering on this point, but it

had to be understood that loss of life was inevitable in carrying out acts of

sabotage, and that the main object was, by means of a number of sabotage

operations, to undermine confidence in Stalin’s Five-Year Plan, in the new

technique, and in that way, to undermine confidence in the Party leadership.

Emphasizing the necessity of extreme measures, Trotsky quoted the Latin

proverb to the effect: “What medicine cannot heal, iron will heal, and what iron

cannot heal, fire will heal.” I remember that, somewhat perplexed, I suggested

that this would undermine the defence capacity of the country at a time when,

with the accession of Hitler to power, the danger of war, and particularly the

danger of an attack on the U.S.S.R. by Germany, was becoming particularly

acute. To this question I did not get a comprehensive reply, but Trotsky hinted

that it was precisely the growing acuteness of the war danger that may place

defeatism on the order of the day. (141-142)

Romm’s meeting with Sedov in April 1934 in Paris touched on the same matter.

Sedov told me that in connection with my going to America Trotsky had asked to

be informed in case there was anything interesting in the sphere of Soviet-

American relations. When I asked why this was so interesting, Sedov told me:

“This follows from Trotsky’s line on the defeat of the U.S.S.R. Inasmuch as the

date of the war of Germany and Japan against the U.S.S.R. depends to a certain

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extent on the state of Soviet-American relations, this cannot fail to be of interest

to Trotsky. (144)

Assessing the Evidence

Piatakov testified at length that he had personally spoken to Trotsky and received

letters from him concerning the latter’s agreements with both Germany and Japan.

Likewise Radek said that Trotsky had discussed his, Trotsky’s, agreements with both

Germany and Japan in letters to him. Vladimir Romm, a Soviet journalist, testified that

he had passed letters between Trotsky and Radek hidden in a book.

As we’ve seen, Getty said that Trotsky had sent letters to Radek, Sokol’nikov,

Preobrazhensky “and others” in 1932. Evidently the Trotsky Archives at Harvard do not

make it clear whether the “others” included Piatakov, nor whether Trotsky continued to

send letters to his supporters in the USSR after 1932. Shestov said that he had received

Trotsky’s instructions through a face-to-face talk with Sedov.

Piatakov claimed Sedov had told him to order through German firms that would

“kick back” funds to Trotsky. American engineer John Littlepage read this passage in the

trial transcript and wrote that he found it credible. Littlepage claimed that in Berlin in

1931 he had learned of fraudulent orders for useless mining equipment being made by

Russian émigrés acting for Soviet companies. He said that if Piatakov had made such

orders the German companies would not have found it unusual, so Piatakov’s story did

not seem at all farfetched to him.49

Archival Documents and The 1937 Trial Transcript: Sokol’nikov and Radek

Concerning Trotsky’s Relations With Japan and Germany

In the course of his indictment at the start of the 1937 Trial Soviet Prosecutor

Andrei Vyshinskii said that in pretrial confessions Sokol’nikov had testified that a foreign

diplomat had informed him of Trotsky’s contact with his country:

49 John D. Littlepage with Demaree Bess, In Search of Soviet Gold. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co, 1938, pp. 102-3. According to the late Prof. John N. Hazard of Columbia University Littlepage was an anticommunist but basically apolitical engineer who had no reason to lie to make the Soviet charges “look good.” As a student of Soviet law Hazard stayed with the Littlepage family in Moscow in the mid-1930s. (Hazard interv. by Furr April 1981)

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The accused Sokolnikov also admitted that, taking advantage of his position as

Assistant People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs, he, on L.D. Trotsky’s

instructions, carried on secret negotiations with representatives of a certain

foreign state.

The accused Sokolnikov testified:

“At the conclusion of an official conversation held in my office, when

Mr. --- and the secretary of the embassy were about to leave, Mr. --- stopped

awhile.

“At that time both interpreters had already left my office. Taking

advantage of this opportunity, Mr. ---, while I escorted him to the door,

exchanged a few sentences with me. Mr. --- asked me: ‘Are you aware that Mr.

Trotsky has made certain proposals to my government?’

“I replied: ‘Yes, I have been informed of this.’

“Mr. --- asked: ‘How do you appraise these proposals?’

“I replied: ‘I think the proposals are quite serious.’

“Then Mr. --- asked: ‘Is this only your personal opinion?’

“I replied: ‘No, this is also the opinion of my friends.’”

(Vol. VIII, pp. 235, 236) (1937 Trial 9)

To this day not one of the many volumes of the preliminary investigative

materials of this, of the other two Moscow Trials, and of many other such proceedings,

has ever been opened to researchers. But the investigative materials pertaining to this

particular passage were published in 1989 and again in 1991 a volume on the

“rehabilitation” process. Its content is important for our purposes. First, because it shows

that these many volumes of preliminary investigation materials do exist (or did in 1989).

Second, because this passage, quoted from those preliminary materials, show clearly that

the country in question was Japan.

. . . to the file was associated a copy of notes of a talk between G. Ia.

Sokol’nikov, who was at that time the vice-commissar of Foreign Affairs, with

the Japanese ambassador Ota of April 13, 1935 on the question of the petroleum,

fishing, and anthracite concessions on Sakhalin [Island]. At the preliminary

investigation and at the trial G. Ia. Sokol’nikov confirmed the fact of this talk and

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stated that after the talk he supposedly had a short conversation with Ota on the

subject of L.D. Trotsky’s proposals to the Japanese government. The contents of

the conversation, as it is reflected in the transcript of the interrogation of G. Ia.

Sokol’nikov of December 12, 1936, was as follows:

Sokol’nikov: . . . when Ota and the secretary of the embassy were about to leave,

Ota stopped awhile. At that time both interpreters had already left my office.

Taking advantage of this opportunity Ota, while I escorted him to the door,

exchanged a few sentences with me.

Question: Please reproduce your conversation with Ota word for word, as far as

possible.

Answer: Ota asked me: “Are you aware that Mr. Trotsky has made certain

proposals to my government?” I replied: “Yes, I have been informed of this.” Ota

asked: “How do you appraise these proposals?” I replied: “I think the proposals

are quite serious.” Then Ota asked: “Is this only your personal opinion?” I

replied: “No, this is also the opinion of my friends.” On this point our

conversation ended.

Question: Did Ota return to the question of contact between the bloc and the

Japanese government after that?

Answer: No. This conversation with Ota took place at the very end of my

negotiations with him. Shortly after that I stopped working in the NKVD and did

not meet with Ota again.50

There is no basis to conclude that Sokol’nikov was forced to fabricate this

statement, and then again forced at trial to leave out the name and any indication of what

country’s government was in question. It’s precisely these details that strongly suggest

the statement was not a fabrication. This statement was never intended to see the light of

day. The text of this part of Sokol’nikov’s confession is strong corroborative evidence

that both it and his testimony at the Moscow trial are truthful.

The text of Radek’s similar statement at a preliminary investigation has not been

published, though it is briefly summarized on p. 229 on the Reabilitatsia volume, right

after the quotation from Sokol’nikov we’ve just reviewed. But a version of that text was

50 Reabilitatsiia. Politicheskie Protsessy 30-50-x godov. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Politichesoi Literatury, 2001, pp. 228-9. Originally published in Izvestiia TsK KPSS No. 9 (1989).

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reprinted in a 2004 volume of NKVD materials sent to Stalin. It occurs in a part of the

draft of Vyshinsky’s opening statement at the 1937 Trial. (Lubianka B 11-12) Though

expurgated to remove the names of the German figures identified in the original

interrogation (which is still secret) the name of the government – Germany, in this case –

was left in in the draft, while it was omitted in the Trial transcript. (1937 Trial 7-9)

In the following section:

• the passages that are common to both versions of Vyshinsky’s remarks are in

normal type.

• the passages that are only in the Trial transcript are in italics.

• those passages that are only in the pretrial draft of Vyshinsky’s remarks

published in 2004, but are not in the Trial transcript, are in boldface.

The most important result of this textual analysis is this: the draft version

published in 2004 contains many more specific references to Germany and Japan, to

German individuals, and to an outline of Trotsky’s purported agreements with them.

As testified by the accused Pyatakov, L. Trotsky, in his conversation with the

accused in December 1935, informed him that as a result of these negotiations he

had concluded an agreement with the said leader of the National-Socialist Party

HESS on the following terms:

“1) to guarantee a generally favourable attitude towards the German

government and the necessary collaboration with it in the most important

questions of an international character;

“2) to agree to territorial concessions;

“3) to permit German industrialists, in the form of concessions (or some

other forms), to exploit enterprises in the U.S.S.R. which are essential as

complements to German economy (iron ore, manganese, oil, gold, timber, etc.,

were meant);

“4) to create in the U.S.S.R. favourable conditions for the activities of

German private enterprises;

“5) in time of war to develop extensive diversive activities in enterprises

of the war industry and at the front. These diversive activities are to be carried

on under Trotsky’s instructions, agreed upon with the German General Staff.

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These principles of the agreement, as Trotsky related, were finally

elaborated and adopted during Trotsky’s meeting with Hitler’s deputy, Hess.

Likewise, said Trotsky, he had well-established connections with the

Japanese government. (Vol. I, pp. 267, 268)

The nature of this agreement and the extent of the territorial concessions

proposed were communicated by L. Trotsky in his letter to the accused Radek in

December 1935.

. . .

On this point the accused Radek, during examination on December 4,

1936, testified:

“. . . Trotsky’s assertion about his communication with the

representatives of the --- government was not idle talk. I was able to convince

myself of this from conversations I had had at diplomatic receptions in 1935-35

with the military attaché German Mr. General K., the naval attaché, if I am

not mistaken, Mr. B and finally with the press-attaché of the German embassy,

Mr. B, a very well informed representative of Germany.

“Both of them, in a cautious way, gave me to understand / 9 / that the ---

government was in communication with Trotsky.

And further:

“I told Mr K--- that it was absolutely useless expecting any concessions

from the present government, but that the German government could count upon

receiving concessions from “the realist politicians in the U.S.S.R.,” i.e. from the

bloc, when the latter came to power.” (Vol. V, pp. 119, 121)

We should note that even Vyshinsky’s draft has been expurgated of some details.

For example in the summary of Sokol’nikov’s confession Ota’s name is replaced by “O.”

in this draft, while in the Trial transcript itself even this letter is omitted and we read “Mr.

---.” Hess’s name is mentioned in the Trial transcript, presumably because Hess was an

official of the Nazi Party, not a member of the German government. The Soviets insisted

upon making a distinction between the policies of the Soviet government that wanted

good relations with capitalist countries in diplomacy, trade, etc., and the policies of the

Bolshevik Party that pursued subversive ends. It is logical that they would make a similar

distinction in the case of Germany.

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By analogy with Sokol’nikov’s interrogation we may assume that all the names

were present in the still-secret transcript of Radek’s interrogation. Explicit identification

of German and Japanese individuals is more frequent in the draft of Vyshinsky’s remarks,

yet Hess’s name does get into the Trial transcript, though the word “Japan” is excised, as

are the ranks and initials of the German officials and, in the last quotation, the word

“Germany” itself. This appears to show considerable uncertainty within the Soviet

government as to how much to reveal publicly. Perhaps they did not want to “burn their

bridges” to the government and military of any of the Western countries, who after all

could not be blamed for espionage since every country did it and the Soviets were doing

it too.

Assessing This Evidence

As in the case of the Sokol’nikov passage, these differences between the various

versions of the same testimony are hard to explain unless one assumes that the original

testimony was genuine. It is simply not necessary in the slightest to create multiple levels

of fake confessions. But real confessions that were obtained in many interrogations over

an extended time, then edited down in several versions of the indictment, and finally

edited again, we must assume, in the final draft of the Trial transcript, would leave this

kind of documentary trail.

Radek’s and Sokol’nikov’s interrogations were still in existence in 1989 when the

excerpt from it was published. We have evidence that the texts of many other

interrogations, as well as other vital investigative materials, still exist but are kept top

secret in Russian archives. They probably have a great deal more evidence to support the

existence of the conspiracies, including those with Trotsky, Germany and Japan. Since

the archives have been scoured for any evidence that could support the “rehabilitations”,

and thus the supposed innocence, of the defendants, it seems safe to assume that most

material that is still secret is of a different, inculpatory nature.

There appear to be three kinds of documents.

• The published Trial transcript has the fewest details concerning German and

Japanese collaboration by Trotsky and the Trotskyists.

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• Vyshinsky’s draft presentation had more such details, including some that

were excised before he delivered it or, at the very least, before it was

published.

• Transcripts of the defendants’ actual interrogations and confessions have the

most detail of all.

The relatively few such pretrial confession transcripts that have been published –

Bukharin’s first confession, plus Frinovsky’s, Ezhov’s, Yagoda’s, Enukidze’s,

Fel’dman’s, and a few by defendants at the 1936 trials like Zinov’ev and Kamenev –

confirm the impression that they contain primary evidence of outstanding importance. It

is highly probable that a great deal of such evidence remains extant and secret.

In a famous passage in his trial testimony Radek mocked the idea that he might

have been coerced into making the statements he did, saying that it was he who had

“tormented” his interrogators.

When I found myself in the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, the chief

examining official realized at once why I would not talk. He said to me: “You are

not a baby. Here you have fifteen people testifying against you. You cannot get

out of it, and as a sensible man you cannot think of doing so. If you do not want

to testify it can only be because you want to gain time and look it over more

closely. Very well, study it.” For two and a half months I tormented the

examining official. The question has been raised here whether we were

tormented while under investigation. I must say that it was not I who was

tormented, but I who tormented the examining officials and compelled them

to perform a lot of useless work. For two and a half months I compelled the

examining official, by interrogating me and by confronting me with the

testimony of other accused, to open up all the cards to me, so that I could see

who had confessed, who had not confessed, and what each had confessed. (1937

Trial 549; emphasis added)

We have no evidence that the testimony in these confessions was extracted by

threat or force – that is, was false. Why go to the trouble of having a suspect concoct a

detailed confession, naming names, and then take out those names for the sake of a trial?

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By far the most likely reason for omitting the names at trial is that they were genuine in

the first place. Given the absence of any evidence that these confessions were false, and

given the logical progression from more detail in the secret documents to the least detail

in public ones, any objective student would conclude that we should consider these

confessions genuine unless and until evidence to the contrary should be discovered.

But the practice among most scholars of this period of Soviet history is to do precisely

the opposite. Any evidence that tends to support the theory that Trotsky or any of those

accused of espionage, sabotage, conspiracy to overthrow the government or treasonable

contacts with foreign governments did in fact so conspire, is routinely dismissed. The

evidence itself is not evaluated.

There is never any reason to “dismiss” – to refuse to consider – any evidence. All

evidence needs to be evaluated on its own merits and in conjunction with the rest of the

evidence available, as we have done here. The evidence is strong that Radek testified

truthfully both in his pretrial interrogations and at the trial. That means either that Trotsky

was involved with Germany and Japan or, at the least, that Trotsky told Radek he was.

The March 1938 Trial: Krestinsky, Rozengol’ts, Bessonov, Rakovsky

In this trial Nikolai Krestinsky testified that in 1922 he began collaborating with

the German General von Seeckt, at Trotsky’s behest and for factional Trotskyist aims.

Krestinsky said that the clandestine Trotskyite organization did some kind of espionage

or intelligence services for the German General Staff in return for a considerable sum of

money to further their factional work within the Bolshevik Party.

KRESTINSKY: I began my illegal Trotskyite activities at the end of 1921, when

on Trotsky’s suggestion I consented to the formation of an illegal Trotskyite

organization and to my joining its centre, which was to be made up of Trotsky,

Pyatakov, Serebryakov, Preobrazhensky and myself, Krestinsky. Trotsky made

this proposal to me immediately after the Tenth Congress. . . . (1938 Trial 262)

A year later I committed a crime – I refer to the one I spoke about during the

examination of the accused Rosengoltz – the agreement I concluded on Trotsky’s

instructions with General Seeckt, with the Reichswehr in his person, about

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financing the Trotskyite organization in exchange for services of an espionage

nature which we undertook in this connection to render the Reichswehr. . . . (262)

VYSHINSKY: Will you tell us how much money you received?

KRESTINSKY: Beginning with 1923 until 1930 we received annually 250,000

German marks in gold.

VYSHINSKY: This makes approximately two million gold marks altogether

during these years?

KRESTINSKY: Yes, approximately two million gold marks. (265)

Krestinsky made a point of stressing that he had contacted von Seeckt as early as

the previous year, 1921, but that his illegal, criminal contacts with von Seeckt dated only

from 1922.

VYSHINSKY: Inasmuch as you are winding up the story of this period of your

criminal activities, I want to get more precise information on one question. You

said that in the winter of 1921-22 you evolved your calculations on the German

Reichswehr.

KRESTINSKY: The plans to utilize the German Reichswehr for criminal

Trotskyite purposes appeared in the spring of 1922.

VYSHINSKY: Did your Trotskyite organization maintain contact with Seeckt

even before 1921?

KRESTINSKY: There was a contact with him of which I do not want to speak at

an open session. It was a contact established by a member of our organization

who at that time was not yet a member of our organization, and it was not a

contact of a Trotskyite nature. (267-268)

. . .

VYSHINSKY: The question of money for Trotskyite purposes from the German

Reichswehr – is that an official aspect or not?

KRESTINSKY: This was the secret Trotskyite aspect, a criminal thing.

VYSHINSKY: Which refers to 1921-22?

KRESTINSKY: To 1922. (269)

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It is hard to see why he would have insisted upon such precision over an insubstantial

matter unless he were telling the truth.

Krestinsky also claimed that he had met personally with Trotsky in Meran,51 Italy

in October 1933, where Trotsky told him that collaboration with Japan was also essential.

KRESTINSKY: When I told him [Bessonov, another of the defendants – GF]

that I wanted to meet Trotsky he said that there was a possibility of arranging it.

At the same time I said that I would stay in Kissingen to the end of September,

and that I would spend the rest of the time up to the 10th of October in Meran,

and I gave him the address of the Kissingen sanatorium in which I always

stopped, and also my address in Meran. . . .

Trotsky arrived in Meran around the 10th of October together with

Sedov . . . Trotsky, as he told me, arrived with somebody else’s French passport

and he travelled by the route of which Bessonov spoke, that is to say, over the

Franco-Italian border, and not through Switzerland and Germany. For Trotsky,

the questions which bothered us in Moscow were irrevocably settled and he

himself proceeded to expound his instructions with regard to this. He said that as

since 1929 we had developed into an organization of a conspiratorial type, it was

natural that the seizure of power could be consummated only by force. . . . (275-6)

Krestinsky said that Trotsky personally informed him that he was continuing to

work personally with the Germans, and with the Japanese through Sokol’nikov.

He undertook to carry on the negotiations with the Germans. As for the Japanese,

of whom he spoke as a force with which it was also necessary to come to terms,

he said that, for the time being, it was difficult for him to establish direct

connections with them, that it would be necessary to carry on conversations with

them in Moscow, that it was necessary in this connection to use Sokolnikov, who

was working in the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and, as it happened,

was in charge of eastern affairs. And inasmuch as this conversation would be

held only with an official person, and the preliminary conversation would only be

51 The city is called “Meran” in German and Russian, and “Merano” in Italian. We use “Meran” here because this is the spelling in the English translation of the 1938 Trial transcript.

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in the nature of soundings, it would be sufficient to confine ourselves at first to

general statements to the effect that if a government of a bloc of the opposition

groups assumed power in the Soviet Union, it would display a favourable attitude

towards the Japanese and take into consideration the wishes of the Japanese

during the discussion and settlement of the controversies existing between the

Soviet government and the Japanese government. (277-278)

Rozengol’ts testified that he had contacted von Seeckt and Chief of the German

General Staff Haase in 1923 when ordered by Trotsky and for Trotskyist purposes.

(Krestinsky too had confessed to meeting with von Seeckt and Haase.)

My espionage activities began as far back as 1923, when, on TROTSKY’S

instructions, I handed various secret information to the Command-in-Chief of the

Reichswehr, SEECKT, and to the Chief of the German General Staff, HASSE.

Subsequently, direct connections with me were established by the ---

Ambassador in the U.S.S.R., Mr. N, to whom I periodically gave information of

an espionage character. After Mr. N’s departure I continued my espionage

connections with the new Ambassador, Mr. N.” (Vol VI, p. 131 reverse) (9)

He insisted that this is when his conspiratorial work began – that is, that this

contact was not work for the USSR, which had trade and military agreements with

Weimar Germany at the time.

VYSHINSKY: . . . So you, Rosengoltz, established connections with the German

intelligence service already in 1923?

ROSENGOLTZ: With Seeckt directly.

VYSHINSKY: Do you draw a line between the two?

ROSENGOLTZ: I am saying it merely for the sake of exactitude.

VYSHINSKY: So since 1923 you, accused Rosengoltz, began to supply

espionage information to foreign states?

ROSENGOLTZ: That is right. (261)

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Rozengol’ts’ distinction here is correct. Contact with the German General Staff is

not the same as contact with German intelligence, even though espionage for both would

be equally illegal. Here too it is hard to imagine why Rozengol’ts would have taken the

trouble to be so precise unless he were telling the truth. Liars can feign precision, but in

this case there seems to be no reason to fabricate this kind of distinction.

He testified to working with both Germany and Japan on Trotsky’s instructions.

In addition to instructions I received from TROTSKY through KRESTINSKY

and SEDOV to carry on sabotage activities in the sphere of foreign trade with the

object of rendering direct assistance to Germany and Japan, the character of my

sabotage activities was also determined by instructions I received from the

--- Ambassadors in the U.S.S.R., Mr. N and Mr. N, connections with whom

played an important part in this matter, as I had to be guided in my work by their

definite instructions.

After I had established contact with TUKHACHEVSKY and RYKOV, I

informed the former through KRESTINSKY, and the latter I myself informed, of

TROTSKY’S instuctions regarding sabotage activities, and both approved of the

work I had done.

As a result of all this, sabotage activities in foreign trade proceeded

mainly along the following three lines: first – economic assistance to Germany

and Japan at the expense of the U.S.S.R.; second – causing economic loss and

damage to the U.S.S.R.; third – causing political damage to the U.S.S.R. (Vol. VI,

p. 49) (15-16)

ROSENGOLTZ: I shall enumerate the main points. Sedov also conveyed

directions from Trotsky about the organization of terrorism, stating that at that

period these instructions about terrorism should have no direct practical bearing

on Krestinsky and myself from motives of secrecy, since special instructions

were being given on this score to the terrorist organization of Ivan Nikitich

Smirnov. In 1933 directions and instructions were received with regard to

sabotage in the sphere of foreign trade. As Sedov had told me that Trotsky had an

agreement with certain German circles, from this standpoint sabotage was of very

essential importance to Trotsky for the maintenance of his prestige and the

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preservation of the agreement. The principal line in sabotage was to further the

interests of Germany and Japan in the sphere of foreign trade. (246)

Rozengol’ts said that he met personally with Sedov in both 1933 and 1934.

In so far as TROTSKY had an agreement with Germany and Japan, of which I

had been informed (both during the negotiations – at my meeting with Sedov in

1933; and of the agreement that had been reached – at my meeting with him in

1934), I received corresponding instructions from TROTSKY, and my sabotage

activities in the sphere of foreign trade served the same purpose. (Vol. VI, p. 48)

(18)

Bessonov said that he had received a letter from Trotsky in 1934, and also met

Trotsky in Paris in that year.

BESSONOV: I received a short letter through Johannson, a note from Trotsky, in

which he wrote about arranging a meeting with one of the Trotskyites in

Germany to inform him about the events of June 30 in Germany. I was the only

person who could go. At the end of July 1934 I arrived in Paris by the day train

and also left by the day train. The whole talk took place in a hotel at which

Johannson always stayed. Trotsky said that he knew me very well from

Pyatakov’s letters and from Krestinsky’s accounts. (63)

Here Trotsky urged him to pressure the Germans to come to some official agreement with

the Opposition, saying:

VYSHINSKY: What did you and Trotsky say about your underground Trotskyite

tasks?

BESSONOV: He imposed on his followers working in the diplomatic field the

task of adopting the line of sabotaging official agreements in order to stimulate

the interest of the Germans in unofficial agreements with opposition groups.

“They will come to us yet,” said Trotsky, referring to Hess and Rosenberg. He

said that we must not be squeamish in this matter, and that we might be ensured

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real and important help from Hess and Rosenberg. He said we must not stop

short at consenting to big cessions of territory. (63)

Khristian Rakovsky testified that in September 1934 an important Japanese

official had spoken to him directly concerning an agreement with the opposition.

RAKOVSKY: . . . In September 1934 I was sent to Tokyo at the head of the

Soviet Red Cross Delegation to an international conference of Red Cross

Societies, which was to take place there in October. The day after I arrived in

Tokyo, I was stopped in the corridor of the Japanese Red Cross building by a

certain prominent public man of Japan. I can mention his name.

THE PRESIDENT: No, there is no need.

RAKOVSKY: Very well, I will name him at the session in camera. He invited

me to tea. I made his acquaintance. He held a position which had some relation to

my mission – I want to say, not my mission as one who belonged to the

opposition, but my governmental mission. I accepted his amiable invitation.

During the conversation this persion (here I omit various compliments,

commonplaces, flattering remarks) said that the interests of the political trend to

which I belonged in the U.S.S.R. and the interests of a certain government fully

coincided, and that he personally welcomed my arrival in Tokyo because it

would give him the opportunity to discuss certain questions concerning both

sides, . . . (289-290)

Rakovsky then said that during 1935 and the first half of 1936 he had had five

communications with Naida, a Japanese agent. Naida gave him to understand that the

Japanese had relations with Trotsky. Rakovsky communicated with Trotsky about this.

During the second and third meeting with the public man who headed a big

public organization in Japan we established the nature of the information which I

promised to supply to the agents of the Japanese intelligence service in Moscow

and also the technique of transmitting this information. While still in Tokyo, I

drew into this work Dr. Naida, secretary of the Red Cross Delegation, of whom I

already knew that he was a member of the underground counter-revolutionary

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terrorist organization. I sent Dr. Naida with my card to the public man and he

arranged with him as to how and with whom Dr. Naida was to meet in Moscow;

it was he who acted as liaison agent between me and the Japanese intelligence

service. In Tokyo I had yet another meeting, with a third person. . . . I was

introduced to this third person by the second high personage. He asked me to

take coffee with him – this was after dinner; we sat down at a table and began to

talk.

I shall not reproduce the whole conversation, and it is not necessary

either; I shall give it to you in substance. He started the conversation by saying:

“We are aware that you are a very close friend and adherent of Mr. Trotsky. I

must ask you to write to him that a certain government is dissatisfied with his

articles on the Chinese question and also with the behaviour of the Chinese

Trotskyites. We have a right to expect a different line of conduct on the part of

Mr. Trotsky. Mr. Trotsky ought to understand what is necessary for the certain

government. There is no need to go into details, but it is clear that an incident

provoked in China would be a desirable pretext for intervening in China.” I wrote

to Trotsky about all this. . . . (293-294)

Summary: Evidence From The Moscow Trials

Of the defendants at the three public Moscow Trials nine men claimed to have

heard directly from either Trotsky or his son Sedov about contacts between Trotsky and

German or Japanese officials.

We noted above that many other defendants – Bukharin, for example – testified

that they had heard about this at second or third hand and believed it. Bukharin said he

had heard about it from Radek, whom he had every reason to believe. But if Radek had

been lying Bukharin would not have known, so Bukharin’s testimony on this point is

evidence at second hand.

However, indirect or “second hand” evidence is still evidence. It can be used to

corroborate – or, as the case may be, to contradict and so disconfirm – other more direct

evidence. Therefore we will consider it briefly at the end of our discussion.

The Moscow Trial defendants provided very strong evidence of Trotsky’s

collaboration with Germany and Japan. This evidence has never been successfully

impugned. But it has been declared false so many times – its falsity taken for granted

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without evidence – that its “falsehood” is constituent of the current mainstream paradigm

of Soviet history. As we discuss later in the present essay, official Soviet “rehabilitations”

are political documents many of which are simply frauds but nonetheless continue to be

accepted as true.

Evidence From The Former Soviet Archives

The rest of this essay could be thought of as an attempt to assess – that is, to

confirm or disconfirm – some of the statements made by the defendants at the three

public Moscow Trials concerning Trotsky’s alleged German-Japanese collaboration in

the light of new documentary evidence from the former Soviet archives.

We have already considered some evidence from former Soviet archives:

• Trotsky’s telegram of June 18, 1937 to the Soviet government;

• published excerpts from still secret pretrial investigative materials on

Sokol’nikov and Radek.

In the rest of the essay we will examine other archival evidence implicating Trotsky that

has been made public since the end of the USSR in 1991 to date.

Pavliukov

In 2007 Russian researcher Aleksei Pavliukov published the fullest account to

date of Nikolai Ezhov’s career.52 This book, and Ezhov’s career and conspiracies, are of

great importance to any accurate understanding of the events of the late 1930s. For our

present more limited purposes it is important because Pavliukov was accorded privileged

access to certain unpublished materials relating to these conspiracies from the

investigative files.

Among those materials were some dealing with the second Moscow Trial. Here is

Pavliukov’s discussion of the part of a confession by Radek dated October 20, 1936 in

which Radek discusses Trotsky’s relations with Germany and their significance.

Radek reported that Trotsky, who had supposedly established firm contacts with

German authorities, let them know that after its coming to power the Trotskyite-

52 Aleksei Pavliukov, Ezhov. Biografia. Moscow: Zakharov, 2007.

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Zinovievite bloc was ready to make significant concessions in relation to

Germany. This would be expressed in profitable conditions for the export of

German goods from the USSR, in a reduction of prices for Soviet goods exported

to Germany, in the permission of German capital to exploit the natural riches of

the country, and also in several territorial concessions. (Pavliukov 236)

This corresponds with what Radek testified during the January 1937 Moscow

Trial. Had the pretrial investigation materials, which were never intended to be made

public, failed to confirm the trial testimony, we would have reason to doubt that

testimony and suspect some “stage-managing” at the trial. But here the opposite is the

case. Therefore, it confirms his trial testimony. The existence of such confessions argues

against any idea that the Trial was “stage-managed.”

In the following passage Pavliukov quotes some words of Radek’s directly.

In the event of war between Germany and the Soviet Union upon which,

according to Radek’s words, Trotsky laid great hopes, “the Trotskyist

commanders could even use certain individual defeats in battle as proof of the

supposedly incorrect policy of the Central Committee of the AUCP(b) and in

general of the senselessness and ruinous nature of the given war. They – Radek

continued to fantasize – using such failures and the exhaustion of the Red Army

soldiers, might even call upon them to abandon the front and turn their weapons

against the government. That might give the German Army the possibility of

occupying the abandoned areas and create a real threat of a crushing defeat of the

whole front.” Under these conditions the conspirators, relying upon those parts of

the Army commanded by the Trotskyist commanders, might obtatin a real chance

to carry out a seizure of power in the country. (Pavliukov 236-7)

This passage is congruent with the testimony of some of the military figures who

asserted that they were in collaboration with both Trotsky and the Germans. We will

examine that testimony below. It is also broadly consistent with what Piatakov testified at

the January 1937 trial (see above).

Pavliukov also summarizes a confession of Radek’s in the archives and dated two

days later, on December 22, 1936 that concerns Trotsky.

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The ultimate completion of the story with Trotsky’s sellout of his former country

occurred in Radek’s confession of December 22, 1936. “As it turned out,” the

supposed meeting between Pyatakov and Trotsky in Norway was caused by the

necessity to discuss a letter that had been received the evening before from

Trotsky, in which the latter set forth his plans on the questions of the activity of

the Trotskyist-Zinovievist bloc on foreign matters.

This letter, according to Radek, pointed out the desirability of the seizure

of power even before the start of the impending war, and for this it would be

essential to activate terrorist activity against the leaders of the Soviet

government. For the normalization of relations with Germany it was considered

expedient to agree to permit Germany to take part in the exploitation of areas of

useful ores on the territory of the USSR and to guarantee the provision of

foodstuffs and fats at less than world prices. As for Japan, the letter supposedly

said that it would be necessary to give it access to Sakhalin oil, and to guarantee

additional access to oil in the event of war with America, and also to permit it

access to the exploitation of Soviet gold-producing areas. Besides that it followed

that they ought not to hinder the German seizure of the Danubian and Balkan

countries and not to interfere with Japan’s seizure of China.

If they did not succeed in taking power before the war this goal might be

attainable, in Trotsky’s opinion (in Radek’s exposition), as a result of a military

defeat of the USSR, for which it was essential to energetically prepare. Active

sabotage activities before and during the war would, besides weakening the

defensive potential of the Soviet Union, demonstrate the real strength of the

Trotskyist-Zinovievist bloc and facilitate postwar negotiations with Germany,

which was not of small importance, since in the event the conspirators came to

power as a result of a crushing defeat of the USSR, it would not be possible to

manage with the concessions of peacetime. In that case they would have to yield

to the Germans obligations for the purchase of German goods for a long period of

time, etc. In order that this scheme, attributed to the professional revolutionary

Trotsky, would not look altogether too clumsy, Radek supplied it with arguments

according to which Trotsky supposedly relied upon in developing all these

defeatist plans. Afterwards, as a result of the strengthening of Germany and

Japan (although at the expense of the USSR), would begin the unavoidable war

between the imperialist powers, as it was supposedly set forth in Trotsky’s letter,

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it could be possible to go once again on the counter-offensive, since the

consequences of this war would facilitate the reappearance in the world of a new

revolutionary situation.

This is the message supposedly received by Radek at the end of 1935

that stimulated Pyatakov to set out as soon as he could to consult with Trotsky in

person. Radek confirmed Pyatakov’s confession about this meeting and filled

them out with new details that Pyatakov had supposedly shared with him after his

return to Moscow. It turned out that Trotsky had promised the Germans that

during war between Germany and the USSR the Trotskyist commanders at the

front would act according to the direct orders of the German General Staff, and

after the war the new government would compensate Germany for part of its

military expenses by paying with goods that were essential for its military

industries.

At the same time Trotsky strove to avoid too great a dependence on

Germany and Japan and was supposedly carrying on negotiations with the

English and French too. As a result of the meetings that had taken place with

representatives of Germany, England and France an agreement had been drafted

that foresaw that, in the event the Trotskyists came to power, England and France

would also not lose by it, to which Germany graciously acceded. The French

were promised a benevolent regard to their attempts to obtain the return of their

prerevolutionary debts to Russia and their pretensions to the metallurgical

industry of the Donbas, and the English – consideration of their interests in the

Caucasus.

After the war, in accordance with the plans attributed to Trotsky, there

would be established in the Soviet Union the same kind of social-economic

system as in the other countries of Europe and, of course, the Comintern would

be disbanded. (Pavliukov 239-240)

Pavliukov and The 1937 Trial Transcript Compared

This summary of Radek’s confession of December 22, 1936 is consistent with

Radek’s testimony at the January 1937 trial. In fact Vyshinsky read a brief quotation

from this very confession in his opening statement at the trial:

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For example, the accused Radek, confirming Pyatakov’s testimony, testified

during examination on December 22, 1936, that one of the points of the

agreement reached between Trotsky and the representatives of the German

National-Socialist Party was the obligation

“. . . during Germany’s war against the U.S.S.R. . . . to adopt a defeatist

position, to intensify diversive activities, particularly in enterprises of

military importance ... to act on Trotsky’s instructions agreed upon with

the German General Staff.” (Vol. V, p. 152) (1937 Trial 10-11)

Pavliukov’s summary of Radek’s confession also contains some details that did

not come out at the trial. For instance, according to the published trial transcript Radek

did not accuse Trotsky during the Trial of planning to accommodate the powerful

imperialist countries by dissolving or banishing the Comintern. In this unpublished

confession Radek stresses that “Trotskyist military commanders” would be working

directly with the German general staff to take advantage of defeat in war with Germany.

According to the transcript Radek said nothing about this at the trial.

The Russian language transcript is far shorter than the English version, which was

evidently published later in the year, after the arrest and execution of Tukhachevsky and

the other military conspirators. Putna and Primakov, both well-known Trotskyists, were

under arrest at the time of the trial. Putna, military attaché to Great Britain, had been

recalled and arrested on August 20, 1936. Primakov had been arrested a few days earlier.

Putna is mentioned in the trial transcripts in a general manner, as a military commander

who did have contact with the German general staff. Both the Russian and the English

transcripts record the following passage in Radek’s interrogations:

And, finally, after receiving Trotsky’s directives in 1934, I sent him the reply of

the centre, and added in my own name that I agreed that the ground should be

sounded, but that he should not bind himself, because the situation might change.

I suggested that the negotiations should be conducted by Putna, who had

connections with leading Japanese and German military circles. And Trotsky

replied [to me – Russian only, GF]: “We shall not bind ourselves without your

knowledge, we shall make no decisions.” For a whole year he was silent. And at

the end of that year he confronted us with the accomplished fact of his

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agreement. You will understand that it was not any virtue on my part that I

rebelled against this. But it is a fact for you to understand. (Russian transcript

p. 226; English transcript p. 545)

In the English version the following passage also occurs, which is omitted

altogether in the much shorter Russian version:

Radek: In 1935. But notwithstanding this, we decided to call a conference. And

before this – in January, when I arrived – Vitaly Putna came to see me with some

request from Tukhachevsky. I said: “This is no way for a leader [Trotsky – GF]

to act. There has been no news of this man for six months. Get hold of him, dead

or alive.” Putna promised. But when I received no answer from Putna, . . . (105)

Vyshinsky then reprises this passage a little later, again only in the English transcript:

Vyshinsky: Accused Radek, in your testimony you said: “In 1935 . . . we

resolved to call a conference, but before this, in January, when I arrived, Vitaly

Putna came to me with a request from Tukhachevsky. . . .” I want to know in

what connection you mention Tukhachevsky’s name.

Radek: Tukhachevsky had been commissioned by the government with some

task for which he could not find the necessary material. I alone was in possession

of this material. He rang me up and asked if I had this material. I had it, and he

accordingly sent Putnam, with whom he had to discharge this commission, to get

this material from me. Of course, Tukhachevsky had no idea either of Putna’s

role or of my criminal role. . . .

Vyshinsky: And Putna?

Radek: He was a member of the organization. . . .

Vyshinsky: Do I understand you correctly, that Putna had dealings with the

members of your Trotskyite underground organization, and that your reference to

Tukhachevsky was made in connection with the fact that Putna came on official

business on Tukhachevsky’s orders?

Radek: I confirm that, and I say that I never had and could not have had any

dealings with Tukhachevsky connected with counter-revolutionary activities,

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because I knew Tukhachevsky’s attitude to the Party and the government to be

that of an absolutely devoted man. (146)


The Russian version does not mention Putna as a member of the Trotskyite

organization, while the English transcript makes it clear that he was. Tukhachevsky is not

even mentioned in the Russian, while in the English version Radek appears to go out of

his way to declare Tukhachevsky innocent entirely. One possible explanation is that the

English translation was only prepared later in 1937 after the arrests of the leading

Tukhachevsky Affair defendants. The discovery of the military conspiracy was far more

grave in its potential consequences than the uncovering of the continuing activities of the

high-ranking Bolsheviks who testified at the January 1937 trial, serious as this was.

According to this logic the shorter Russian transcript may have been prepared soon after

the trial. Subsequently it was severely edited in order to give the gist of the trial

testimony while not disclosing allegations against others still under investigation,

including the military men. The much longer English transcript might then have been

prepared later in the year, with much more detail to show the conspiratorial links to the

Tukhachevsky defendants and with a view to influencing foreign opinion. The more

information, the more credible the charges – so the logic of the Soviet government may

have run. Such a consideration may also account for the fact that both the Russian and

English transcripts of the March 1938 “Bukharin-Rykov” trial were huge, more than

three times the length of the Russian version of the 1937 trial, and that the Russian

transcript contained more detail than the English rather than less, as in the case of the

1937 trial transcript.

Whatever the reasons, the differences we can now discern between Radek’s

unpublished confessions and his testimony at the trial argue in favor of the genuineness

of those confessions. Why go to all the trouble to fabricate confessions that implicate the

military, and charge Trotsky with agreeing to destroy the Comintern, and then omit them

at the public trial?

Of course we have no evidence that any of the trial testimony was “fabricated” in

advance anyway. Pavliukov states and restates his skepticism concerning the materials he

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quotes. But why bother to quote them all without comment or analysis if they are all lies?

Pavliukov can’t bring himself to take either position consistently.

Ezhov’s Confessions

Pavliukov never quite brings himself to state that Ezhov was guilty. Neither does

he make any overt claim that his confessions were fraudulent – the result of torture or

other compulsion. But if Ezhov were in fact guilty then his confessions were, in the main

at least, accurate.

Later in his book, when he discusses how Ezhov retracted all of his many detailed

confessions at his trial, Pavliukov suggests that he may have done this in order to delay

his execution a day or two by complicating matters. It seems that Pavliukov also could

not bring himself to accept the “canonical” viewpoint that all of Ezhov’s confessions

were false and that he was innocent of all the crimes to which he confessed, including

collaboration with the Germans. And Ezhov’s execution was in fact delayed by two days,

so Pavliukov’s hypothesis makes sense.

We need to pause to consider the implications of Pavliukov’s position.

Throughout his book Pavliukov expresses skepticism about the truth of Ezhov’s

confessions. He does report that Ezhov confirmed all of them when he was given the

indictment and all the volumes of his investigation file:

The last interrogation took place January 31 [1940] and on the very next day

A.A. Esaulov, assistant chief of the Investigative section of the NKVD of the

USSR reported the conclusion of the investigation. Ezhov was presented with the

12 volumes of his criminal case file for his study. He read it through and then

declared that he confirmed all the confessions that he had given during the

preliminary investigation and had no additions to make. (529)

Two days later Ezhov allegedly told his successor as head of the NKVD Lavrenty

Beria that all of his confessions were “imagined 100%” and denied all the charges against

him. Thereupon Ezhov’s former “zam” (vice-commissar) at the NKVD Mikhail

Frinovsky was called to testify against Ezhov. Frinovsky confirmed everything he knew

about his and Ezhov’s conspiracies.

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Pavliukov shows no skepticism towards Frinovsky’s testimony. As we have seen,

one detailed confession of Frinovsky’s has now been published, and it implicates Ezhov.

Pavliukov opines that Ezhov retracted all his pretrial confessions simply to postpone the

inevitable trial and execution, if possible (530). His only evidence for this surmise is that

Ezhov was inexplicably not executed on the day of his trial, February 4, 1940, but two

days later on February 6. However that may be, for our purposes the point is as follows:

Pavliukov never suggests that Ezhov’s retraction and statement at trial, during which he

claimed he was innocent of wrongdoing, was true. Nor, interestingly, did Ezhov claim he

had been tortured into making false statements.

The implications of the confessions of Ezhov, Frinovsky, and other NKVD men

are enormous. They are utterly incompatible with the present “Cold War” or “anti-Stalin”

paradigm of Soviet history. To take just one example: in his “Secret Speech” at the 20th

Party Congress Khrushchev blamed Ezhov for repressions – but only as Stalin’s tool. Yet

three weeks before, on February 1 1956, Khrushchev had said at a meeting to plan his

speech “Ezhov, no doubt, was an honest man, not to blame” (RKEB 1 308). Khrushchev

seems to have realized that to accept the story of Ezhov’s conspiracy was to exculpate

Stalin from direct responsibility for the massive repressions. Pavliukov’s acceptance of

Ezhov’s confessions has the same effect.

Ezhov’s confessions were made in secret, never intended for publication. It

appears that they were genuine. Pavliukov treats them as such. He also treats Radek’s

secret confessions as though they too were genuine. In Ezhov’s case the accused (Ezhov)

confirmed his confessions right up to the moment of trial, and then retracted them all, yet

he was still convicted, evidently on two bases: (a) Frinovsky’s accusations against him

(there may have been other testimony against him as well); and (b) the testimony of all of

his previous interrogations and confessions, plus all the other testimony given against

him by others during the proceedings.

Ezhov gave many detailed confessions and confirmed them all before trial, while

at the trial itself he retracted everything. Pavliukov carefully reports and summarizes

Ezhov’s pretrial confessions. Pavliukov also reports Ezhov’s recantation at trial but does

not accept it as truthful. Radek, in contrast, confessed both before trial and at trial, so

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there is even less reason to question the truthfulness of Radek’s confessions than there is

to question Ezhov’s.

Dimitrov’s Diary

In 2003 the diary of Georgi Dimitrov, head of the Comintern after 1935 and close

associate of Stalin’s, was published. Dimitrov met frequently with Stalin and other

Bolshevik leaders, and his diary contains many important passages and statements by

Stalin and others. On December 16 1936 Dimitrov met in the Kremlin with Stalin and

four of his closest associates, Molotov, Kaganovich, Voroshilov and Ordzhonikidze.

During this meeting they received a report about an interrogation of Sokol’nikov of

December 12, a few days before. Here is what Dimitrov wrote, with the phrases of

special interest to our present investigation in boldface:

16 December 1936

– With “the Five” in the Kremlin

(Stal[in], Molot[ov], Kag[anovich], Vor[oshilov], Ordzhonikidze).

Exchange of opinions of Ch[inese] events. . . .

– On the French question: . . .

– From the investigation of Piatakov, Sokolnikov, Radek, and others:

Interrogation of Sokolnikov, 12 December 1936:

Question: Thus, the investigation concludes that Trotsky abroad and the

center of the bloc within the USSR entered into negotiations with the

Hitlerite and Japanese governments with the following aims:

First, to provoke a war by Germany and Japan against the USSR;

Second, to promote the defeat of the USSR in that war and to take

advantage of that defeat to achieve the transfer of power in the USSR to

[their] government bloc;

Third, on behalf of the future bloc government to guarantee territorial and

economic concessions to the Hitlerite and Japanese governments.

Do you confirm this?

Reply: Yes, I confirm it.

Question: Do you admit that this activity by the bloc is tantamount to outright

treason against the motherland?

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Reply: Yes, I admit it.

(Dimitrov 42-43; emphasis added)

Analysis

This meeting can be confirmed in the schedule of visitors to Stalin’s office for

December 16, 1936.53 The four Politburo members named by Dimitrov are recorded as

entering Stalin’s office at 1905 hrs, fifteen minutes before Dimitrov entered along with

Manuilsky, who was a Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Comintern and head

of the Soviet delegation to it, while Dimitrov himself was General Secretary of the

Executive Committee of the Comintern. Dimitrov and Manuilsky stayed for fifty

minutes. The two Comintern leaders were obviously there to discuss Comintern –

international – matters. Sokolnikov’s testimony was relevant to their concerns.

Dimitrov heard this at a meeting of political leaders of the highest level, including Stalin

himself. There is no indication that Stalin – he would be the only person who might be

able to get away with such a thing – “staged” this meeting for Dimitrov’s benefit.

Dimitrov, a staunch supporter of Stalin and the Soviet Union, did not need reassurance or

“shoring up.” And Dimitrov wrote this in his private diary, only recently published

because of the demise of the Soviet bloc.

Therefore this entry is similar to the signatures of Stalin et al. on the Trotsky

telegram six months later. It is an excellent gauge of what Stalin and top Soviet leaders

believed at the time. This is significant because they had access to all the evidence,

including a huge amount that is still secret.

Was Stalin “Lying”?

It is often asserted by Cold War historians that Stalin was a “liar” so that nothing

he wrote should be “believed.” Therefore – this logic might go – we should not “believe”

him, in this case, in the case of the Trotsky telegram, the comments he wrote on

statements and confessions – ever.

But this reasoning is all wrong. There is no reason to view Stalin as a “liar” any

more than any other political figure. In the course of our research over the past decade we

53 “Posetiteli kremlevskogo kabineta I.V. Stalina.” Istoricheskii Arkhiv 4 (1995), 35.

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have found no examples of Stalin’s “lying,” aside from the Katyn issue – and there is a

huge political dispute about that question which we will not broach here and now. For

what it is worth, Katyn was a very different situation, allegedly involving lying to foreign

powers, a common practice among all governments at all times.

In any case lying is a universal human trait. Everybody lies – but nobody lies all

the time. Therefore, the fact that someone lied in one case or other is not evidence that

they lied at another time. There’s no reason to think that Stalin was lying here to

Dimitrov and Manuilsky, in his words on Trotsky’s telegram, or at any other time unless

there is specific evidence that he was. This is, of course, true for anyone, not just for

Stalin. There is no such thing as an historical figure “who can be trusted,” or one “who

can never be trusted.”

Finally, no evidence is to be “believed” or “disbelieved” in any case. All evidence

must be be analyzed carefully, including in context with other evidence.

S.M. Uritsky

Only a tiny proportion of all the investigative materials from the 1930s have been

made available to researchers and only a small part of that has been published.

Occasionally a privileged researcher is permitted to read and quote from some

investigative files to which no one else has been given access. Normally these are

researchers who promote the “official” Russian government position, which corresponds

to the Khrushchev, Cold War, Gorbachev, and Trotskyist positions that all those

convicted in the Moscow Trials, the Military Purges, plus many others, were completely

innocent.

Such a researcher is Col. Nikolai S. Cherushev, author of a number of books

arguing that no military conspiracies ever existed and, by extension, no other conspiracies

could have existed either. Cherushev has been permitted to see and to quote liberally

from investigative files of many military men that no one else has seen – or, at least, that

no one else has published about.

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One of these files is that of Komkor54 S.M. Uritsky. In Uritsky’s indictment we

read the following:

In the extremely exhaustive text of the sentence by the Military Collegium in the

case of S.P. Uritsky of August 1, 1938 we read:

– on the order of Gamarnik, Pyatakov, Iakir and Tukhachevsky Uritsky

transmitted their letters to Sedov to be passed to Trotsky;

– was connected to the Trotskyist group of Souvarine in Paris, through

which he passed espionage materials from Tukhachevsky for French

intelligence. (Cherushev 1937, 179)

Analysis

We know from other evidence that these men were involved directly with Trotsky.

As Gamarnik, Iakir and Tukhachevsky were also involved in military collaboration with

Germany it is safe to assume that Uritsky’s contact with Trotsky had something to do

with at least Germany as well. However, given Cherushev’s wording here we can’t be

sure that Uritsky did confess to direct contact with Trotsky. We can only be certain that

the court found him guilty of doing so.

In a short fragment from one of Uritsky’s statements to the NKVD he said that he

would make a clean breast of everything. So it appears that this high-ranking military

officer confessed to sending messages from Gamarnik, Piatakov, Iakir and Tukhachevsky

to Trotsky via Sedov.

All Cherushev’s works are devoted to the predetermined conclusion that no

military conspiracy existed at all. That might explain why he has the access he does to

investigative files to which no one else has been admitted: he can be trusted not to

question the “canonical” viewpoint. Nevertheless Cherushev cites the following direct

quotation from Uritsky’s pen. On April 14, 1938 after referring to their “long-standing

friendship” – a phrase not further explained – Uritsky wrote to NKVD officer Veniamin

S. Agas:

54 Corps Commander, equivalent to a two-star general in the US military. See Iurii Beremeev, Anatomiia

Armii. Cited at <http://army.armor.kiev.ua/index.html>.

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I have been feeling poorly in recent days, no bladder control, bloody vomiting,

unable to think, if possible let me have a day’s respite, [then] summon me, I will

report to you, and then I will write everything completely. I wish to turn myself

into the kind of arrestee who helps the authorities, I wish to earn the mercy of

Soviet authority.

As Cherushev notes, this confirms that Uritsky was ill. But it contains no accusation of

torture or mistreatment. Far from being a profession of innocence it is, on the contrary, an

admission of guilt.

Personal contact with Trotsky or, as here, to claim that one had such personal

contact, was highly unusual. The NKVD had no need to fabricate such a detail simply in

order to frame an innocent man. On the contrary: it would have made Uritsky’s

confession stand out from most others, perhaps leading to an interview with a Politburo

member or Stalin himself. That would put things out of Ezhov’s control, because the

arrestee might say that his testimony had been coerced. We know that Politburo members

did interview some arrestees. So we can’t just assume that Uritsky’s confession was

coerced. It may well have been genuine, and at this time we have no reason to doubt that

it was.

Ezhov’s second in command Mikhail Frinovsky identified Agas as one of

Ezhov’s “bone-breakers,” skilled in beating defendants and in fabricating convincing

confessions. But this does not mean that all defendants were beaten into false confessions

either. It ought to remind us that no individual piece of evidence can by itself be decisive,

because every piece of evidence is subject to multiple possible explanations or

interpretations. It is only when the whole complex of circumstantial evidence is

consistent with one conclusion that that conclusion becomes highly probable.

Ia. A. Iakovlev’s Confession of October 1937

Among the documents from former Soviet archives that have been recently

published one of the most significant for our purposes is the lengthy interrogation of Ia. A.

Iakovlev. Iakovlev had been People’s Commissar for Agriculture during the

collectivization period of the early 1930s. In 1937 he was a prominent member of the

Central Committee. Iakovlev also held a number of other very responsible posts: head of

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the agricultural section of the C.C., and first assistant to the chairman of the Party Control

Commission but in reality its head since Ezhov, its formal head, was spending full time

as Commissar of the NKVD. Since August 11, 1936 Iakovlev had been a member of the

secretariat for the first draft of the program of the VKP(b), the Bolshevik Party.

Iakovlev was arrested on October 12, 1937. On October 15-18 he confessed that

in 1923 Trotsky had asked him to be a Trotskyist “sleeper” in the Party – to go

underground, cease all contact with any Trotskyists, and climb into responsible Party

positions.

Trotsky had already at that time posed the question in this context, that he should

have his own agents in the Party leadership at the necessary time who could pass

information to him and collaborate in his seizure of power. (Lubianka B 388)

A few pages further in his interrogation-confession Iakovlev outlines how he was

recruited by German intelligence in 1935 in Berlin. According to Iakovlev a German

agent named Shmuke55 recruited him into cooperation on two bases. First Shmuke told

Iakovlev that he knew from Russian émigrés in Germany that Iakovlev had collaborated

with the Russian Tsarist Okhrana, or secret police, towards the end of 1916 in Petrograd.

Shmuke used this information to blackmail Iakovlev by threatening to expose his

collaboration.

Once in the Bolshevik Party and after the Revolution a confession of

collaboration, even at a vulnerable early age, would destroy one’s Party career. Hiding

such a connection could be much worse because it suggested that such a person was

completely untrustworthy and might still be some kind of clandestine agent or other. A

Party member was not supposed to have any secrets – certainly not of any kind of

political relevance – from the Party. Moreover, it made one vulnerable to blackmail and

so an additional security risk.

Shmuke also claimed to know about Iakovlev’s participation in the Trotskyist

underground from Trotsky himself. When Iakovlev pretended not to understand the

German agent’s hints, Shmuke persisted:

55 Presumably “Schmucke” in German.

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At last he told me with special emphasis: “Your main leader L. TROTSKY is

acting in full contact and on the basis of mutual benefit with the new

Germany.” . . . Although they could inform on him to the Soviet authorities at

any moment, SHMUKE said that they did not wish to do that because they were

hoping to establish the same kind of contacts with me as they had with

TROTSKY. . . . Faced with this fact, and realizing that the Germans were fully

informed about me, I decided to agree with SHMUKE’S proposal, all the more

since SHMUKE’S information about TROTSKY’S connections with Germany

completely corresponded with what PIATAKOV had said to me and what

TROTSKY had written. . . . Considering the matter more thoroughly, I decided

that if possible I would sell my collaboration to the Germans more dearly, first of

all to obtain from German intelligence corresponding possibilities for foreign

connections for our organization and, in the first place, with TROTSKY, and also

to increase my importance in the eyes of the German government. (Lubianka B

394-5)

Assessing Iakovlev’s Confession: Stalin’s Annotations

The following document in this volume is a copy of Stalin’s handwritten

questions.

1) Did he know about Vareikis’ service with the Tsarist secret police

(okhranke)?

2) His opinion about Mikhailov from Voronezh and his participation in

the c.-r. org. [counter-revolutionary organization – GF].

3) His contact with Trotsky (did he see him personally in 1935 or in

1934).

4) How did he want to use MOPR? Whom in MOPR did he make use of?

[MOPR = Mezhdunarodne Obshchestvo Pomoshchi Revoiutsioneram,

International Organization for Aid to Revolutionaries, the Soviets’ organization

to give help to revolutionaries in fascist countries where communist parties were

illegal and subject to severe repression. – GF]

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5) “Turn” Iakovlev’s wife: he is a conspirator and she must tell us

everything. Ask her about Stasova, Kirsanova,56 and other friends –

acquaintances of hers. (Lubianka B 396)57

Stalin’s handwritten comments on this confession show that he believed this

confession of Iakovlev’s was true and suggested further lines of investigation following

from it. No reasonable reading of the evidence would suggest that Stalin had Iakovlev

framed and then carried on a charade by annotating the confession and asking for

Iakovlev’s wife, also a Party member, to be brought in for questioning about his activities.

Stalin’s remarks on Iakovlev’s interrogation-confession, quoted above, are dated

“no later than October 20, 1937” (Lubianka B No. 227 p. 396). Iakovlev’s wife Elena

Kirillovna Sokolovskaia was arrested on October 12, 1937. On October 17 she was

interrogated and confessed to knowledge of her husband’s Trotskyist activities (Lubianka

B No. 229 pp. 398-9). But she was to face far more serious charges. By April 1938 at

least one of her coworkers in Mosfilm had named her as the leader of a clandestine

Trotskyist group in that organization (Lubianka B No. 323 p. 529). Sokolovskaia was

convicted and shot on August 30, 1938.

Both Stasova and Kirsanova, both prominent Old Bolsheviks, must have been

investigated. On November 11 1937 Stalin privately told Dimitrov:

We shall probably arrest Stasova, too. Turned out she’s scum. Kirsanova is very

closely involved with Yakovlev. She’s scum.” (Dimitrov 69)

56 The “Stasova” referred to must be Elena Stasova. One of the earliest Bolsheviks, having joined in 1898, the same year as Stalin, she had long been working in the Comintern. Also an Old Bolshevik and participant in the Revolution of 1917 K.I. Kirsanova, wife of famous Old Bolshevik Emelian Iaroslavskii, worked with Stasova and others in the Comintern. She published books on women under socialism.

In the following photograph of 1936 Kirsanova is second from left, Stasova third from left: <http://tinyurl.com/kirsanova-stasova>. Autobiographical sketches of both are included in Zhenshchiny

russkoi revoliutsii (“Women of the Russian Revolution,” Moscow: Politizdat, 1982) along with materials about Inessa Armand, Lenin’s wife Krupskaia, Lenin’s sisters, and others. Kirsvanova died in 1947 as a lecturer in the Central Committee school (<http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/()*+,-.+/#0,_123,&4%_ 5#6-0,*.#7>). Stasova continued to hold another high Comintern position until the Comintern’s dissolution in 1943. She died in 1966 (<http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/"8-+*.-,_1,3%-_ 92#8)#3.%->. 57 Now also at the “Memorial” site at <http://www.alexanderyakovlev.org/fond/issues-doc/61209>.

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On November 16 1937 Dimitrov noted “Resolution on the dismissals of

Kirsanova and Stasova.” In Stasova’s case this meant dismissal from her post as Vice-

Chairman of the Executive Committee of MOPR and Chair of the Central Committee of

the Soviet MOPR.

Yet neither Stasova nor Kirsanova was arrested, much less repressed. This can

only mean that Stalin’s serious suspicions against them were not borne out by

investigation. The investigation into their cases must have been an objective one, rather

than a frameup or one that simply aimed to invent “evidence” to sustain Stalin’s

suspicions. And that not only suggests that the investigations of at least some prominent

Bolsheviks were carried out in a proper manner. It means that whatever his suspicions

Stalin wanted to know the truth.

The lists of those who met with Stalin in his office from the early 1930s until his

death have been published. We now know that Iakovlev met in Stalin’s office with

members of Stalin’s groups of supporters in the Politburo on the evening of October 11,

1937.58 Thereafter he disappears from the political record. According to one source

Iakovlev was arrested the next day, October 12.59 According to the header of the

interrogation transcript, dated October 15-18, 1937 Iakovlev had already made a

statement of confession on October 14.

Iakovlev had been very close to Stalin. Together with Stalin and two others60

Iakovlev was one of the principal authors of the new 1936 Constitution. He had worked

closely with Stalin on this, Stalin’s pet project. This meant that Iakovlev was one of the

very highest members of the Soviet government and Bolshevik Party outside the ranks of

the Politburo itself.

Stalin and his supporters wanted contested elections to the Soviet government.

The Party First Secretaries opposed contested elections. Iurii Zhukov has followed the

58 “Posetiteli kremlevskogo kabineta I.V. Stalin,” Istoricheskii Arkhiv 4 (1995), 66-67. A facsimile of the archival document itself may be viewed online at <http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/ stalinvisitors101137.pdf>. 59 “Iakovlev (Epshtein) Iakov Arkad’evich. Biograficheskii Ukazatel.’” Hrono.ru. At <http://www.hrono.ru/biograf/yakovlev_ya.html>. The CC Plenum Decree on the removal of Iakovlev and others from CC membership (Lubianka B, No. 262) is dated December 4-8 by the editors. 60 A.I. Stetsky and B.M. Tal’.

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struggle over this issue through the archival evidence. This struggle for contested

elections was finally lost during the October 1937 Central Committee Plenum.61

Assessing Iakovlev’s Confession: The 1938 Moscow Trial

In the note to Iakovlev’s confession Stalin suggested that I. M. Vareikis had also

been involved with the Tsarist secret police. Like Iakovlev (born 1896), Vareikis (born

1894) was a young man during the First World War. He had been arrested on October 10,

just two days before Iakovlev. Perhaps it was Vareikis who named Iakovlev. Iakovlev did

name Vareikis in his own confession.

Both Vareikis and Iakovlev were named as active underground Trotskyists by

defendants in the Mardh 1938 Moscow Trial. Defendant Grin’ko testified about

Iakovlev’s active role in the conspiracy. He evidently regarded Iakovlev as one of the

leaders of the “terrorist” activity and suggested Iakovlev was in touch with Trotsky.62

In the event of success the organization intended to set up a bourgeois

Ukrainian state after the type of the fascist state.

About this character of the organization I told a prominent member of the

Right and Trotskyite conspiracy, Yakovlev. In the Right and Trotskyite circles

with whom I had occasion to speak, this tendency to transform our organization

into a fascist type of organization undoubtedly existed. (1938 Trial 71)

By “fascist” – earlier in his testimony he had called it “national-fascist”– Grin’ko

meant that the Ukrainian Nationalist organizations outside the Soviet Union had become

organized in a fascist manner and under either German or Polish nationalist leadership.

The fascist nature of Ukrainian nationalism during the interwar period has long been

recognized.63

61 For a discussion of Stalin’s struggle in favor of contested elections (as stipulated in the 1936 Constitution), Stalin’s final defeat, and many specific references to the research of Iurii Zhukov and others, see Grover Furr, “Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform,” Parts One and Two, in Cultural Logic 2005, <http://closic.eserver.org/2005/2005.html>. 62 According to a “Memorial Society” source Grin’ko and the Iakovlevs were neighbors in the apartment building at number 3 Romanov pereulok (=lane) in Moscow. Piatakov too had lived next door to the Iakovlevs. See <http://mos.memo.ru/shot-52.htm>. 63 See Alexander J. Motyl. The Turn To The Right: The Ideological Origins And Development Of

Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919-1929. Boulder, CO / New York: East European Quarterly / Columbia

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GRINKO: Gradually extending my connections with the Right and Trotskyite

centre, and having ascertained who belonged to it, I at the beginnning of 1934

formed an opinion of what the “Right and Trotskyite centre” was.

From a number of conversations and connections, and the tasks I received from

Rykov, Bukharin, Gamarnik, Rosengoltz, Yakovlev, Antipov, Rudzutak,

Yagoda, Vareikis, and a number of other persons, it became clear to me that at

that time the “Right and Trotskyite center” based itself mainly on the military aid

of aggressors. (76)

. . .

VYSHINSKY: Tell us about the terrorist activities.

GRINKO: At that period terrorist activities were one of the main weapons in the

common arsenal of struggle against the Soviet power.

VYSHINSKY: From whom did you learn this?

GRINKO: From Rykov, Yakovlev, Gamarnik and Pyatakov.

. . .

VYSHINSKY: Where did this terrorist link emanate from?

GRINKO: From Trotsky. I learned this from Gamarnik. (77)

. . .

In carrying out the sabotage measures and sabotage instructions in the financing

of agriculture, no little assistance was rendered by Rudzutak, who was in charge

of financial affairs in the Council of People’s Commissars, and by Yakovlev.

(80)

There would seem to be little point in “coordinating” confessions at the public

March 1938 trial with a confession – Iakovlev’s – that was secret and never intended to

be published at all. Iakovlev’s and Grin’ko’s confessions corroborate each other.

Interrogations of Nikolai I. Vavilov

We have further evidence concerning Iakovlev from the investigative materials of

Nikolai I. Vavilov, a prominent Soviet biologist who was arrested, tried and imprisoned

in 1940 for his clandestine participation in an anti-Soviet conspiracy in the early 1930s.

University Press, 1980; John A. Armstrong. Ukrainian Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1963.

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Best known for his feud with Trofim Lysenko and as a champion of Mendelian genetics

Vavilov’s reputation as a scientist was high in his own day and has increased since. It

was long assumed that his arrest and conviction was really a screen for repressing his

scientific view. According to archival evidence released since the end of the USSR this

appears not to have been the case.

Like Iakovlev, Vavilov has long since been “rehabilitated.” However, that does

not mean that he was not guilty or that his confessions have been refuted. In them he

implicated Iakovlev.

Question: You have been arrested as an active participant of an antisoviet

organization and as an agent of foreign intelligence services. Do you admit your

guilt to these charges?

Answer: I admit myself guilty in that since 1930 I have been a member of

an antisoviet ogranization of Rightists that existed in the system of the People’s

Commissariat of Agriculture of the USSR. I do not confess myself guilty of

espionage.

Question: Bear in mind that you will not succeed in keeping your

espionage activity hidden and that the investigation will interrogate you about it,

but for now confess with whom you have been connected in the antisoviet work.

Answer: In antisoviet work I have been connected with the following

persons: Yakovlev, former People’s Commissar for Agriculture, Chernov, former

People’s Commissar for Agriculture, Eikhe, former People’s Commissar for

Agriculture, Muralov, former vice-Commissar for Agriculture, Gaister, former

vice-Commissar for Agriculture. . . . (Transcript of the interrogation of the

arrestee Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov of August 24 1940; Vavilov 269-70)

Vavilov made a differentiated confession. Accused of having spied for foreign

intelligence services, he refused to admit it. But he did admit participating in a Rightist

anti-Soviet organization within the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture throughout the

tenures of five commissars. The fact that Vavilov confessed to one capital charge while

refusing to confess to another makes his confession appear more reliable. The most likely

explanation for such a confession is the desire to tell the truth.

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The commissars he names as Rightist conspirators include Iakovlev and Eikhe.

Eikhe too was executed for massive illegal executions and repressions in collaboration

with Ezhov.

Question: You have admitted your guilt in that from 1930 you have been

a participant in an antisoviet organization of Rightists that has existed in the

system of the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture of the USSR.

Tell us by whom and under what circumstances you were recruited into

the aforesaid organization.

Answer: I was recruited to the antisoviet organization by the former

People’s Commissar for Agriculture of the USSR YAKOVLEV Yakov

Arkad’evich in 1930. The process of recruitment took place through my

receiving, directly from YAKOVLEV, and also from him via GAISTER Aron

Izreailovich – former vice-president of the agricultural academy and WOLF

Moisei Mikhailovich – second vice-president of the agricultural academic –

obvious orders for sabotage, which I carried out in the agricultural academy and

in the Institute of Plant Development.64

Question: It is not clear why YAKOVLEV recruited you to the antisoviet

organization. What was his basis for doing this?

Answer: During the process of my carrying out YAKOVLEV’s

directives he became aware of my antisoviet sentiments which, at the beginning,

were most clearly expressed in the high evaluation that I gave to American and

Western European agricultural methods and my emphasizing their superiority in

comparison with the development of agriculture in the Soviet Union.

(Vavilov 271-2)

Unquestionably it was also the fact that I carried out every assignment

given me by YAKOVLEV that facilitated my being drawn into the antisoviet

organization.

Question: And in what form was your conversation with YAKOVLEV

concerning your participation in the antisoviet organization of Rightists?

Answer: There was no direct conversation about this. I understood him

by the obvious assignments of sabotage that I received from YAKOVLEV.

64 Vavilov has long since been “rehabilitated” and this Institute, still in existence in Russia, is named in his honor.

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Question: Why do you conclude that it was precisely YAKOVLEV who

recruited you to the antisoviet organization of Rightists?

Answer: I conclude that because it was precisly from this period – my

carrying out YAKOVLEV’s directives, that my obvious work of sabotage begins

in the organization of science and in that of plant culture in the sense of justifying

plant culture projects.

Question: You have confessed that you were recruited to the antisoviet

organization of Rightists by YAKOVLEV and at the same time declare that you

never had any direct conversation with YAKOVLEV about this organization.

You are either confusing or simply do not wish to say that even before your

introduction into the organization of Rightists – you were one of the ideologues

and leaders of the antisoviet organization about which you are now remaining

silent. (Vavilov 273-4)

In these passages Vavilov claims that he collaborated in Iakovlev’s Rightist

organization without having been specifically recruited to it. This confuses his

interrogator, who does not understand how Iakovlev could have been a member without

having been specifically recruited to it and also how he could state that he had been

recruited (zaverbovan) by Iakovlev and yet never have spoken with Iakovlev about the

organization.

The interrogator draws the obvious conclusion from this apparently contradictory

assertion by Vavilov that the accused must be hiding something. Something is missing

that if added would make sense of Vavilov’s contradictory story. Vavilov gives fuller

details in the following passage, stating that he and Iakovlev had a mutual understanding,

and that Iakovlev spoke to him in hints and allusions rather than speaking directly of

conspiracies and organizations.

Question: You confessed earlier that YAKOVLEV recruited you into the

antisoviet organization, that, supposedly, he never had any direct conversations

with you about this. We demand that you make your confession more precise.

Answer: I confirm the fact that I was recruited into the antisoviet

organization of Rightists by YAKOVLEV Yakov Arkad’evich. However,

YAKOVLEV never explicitly said that I should take part in an antisoviet

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organization, and there was no special need for him to do so, since YAKOVLEV

knew my antisoviet views, about which I confessed in previous interrogations,

and could confidently rely on me to carry out antisoviet work. In addition I

enjoyed YAKOVLEV’S particular trust, and he himself told me many times:

“We know you well – we trust you, and for that reason I demand you carry out

my directives without objection.” To my frequent declarations about my desire to

leave my leading administrative work in the Agricultural Academy YAKOVLEV

answered: “We will not let you go, we need you, we understand each other.”

(Vavilov 278-84)

However, in the following passage Vavilov does give specific details about the

sabotage of certain agricultural undertakings he was ordered to accomplish by Iakovlev.

Answer: One of the basic undertakings of sabotage carried out with my

direct participation upon YAKOVLEV’S orders was the creation of a great

superfluity of narrowly specialized scientific-research institutes that were of

absolutely no vital importance, . . .

The next sabotage action of significance that was carried out with my

direct participation upon YAKOVLEV’S order and whose consequences may

still be felt today was the collapse of the provincial [oblast’] network of

experimental pasture-farming stations, the assignment of which under conditions

of socialist reconstruction and the wide variation of climate conditions and soils

in our country is of great importance, . . .

Besides that I directly participated in the development of deliberately

harmful plans of plant culture during the First and Second Five-Year Plans. I

carried out this sabotage work according to the direct order of the former

People’s Commissar for Agriculture YAKOVLEV Y.A. and the former vice-

presidents of the agricultural academy VOL’F M.M., GAISETER A. I. . . .

Despite this I was given a directive by YAKOVLEV, through VOL’F, of

expanding the compulsory plan of area to be sown in 1937 of 150 million

hectares, which, it was clear, did not correspond to the possibilities at that

time. . . . (Vavilov 284-88)

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Analysis of Vavilov’s Confessions

These confessions of Vavilov’s, at least insofar as they implicate Iakovlev, appear

completely credible. There is no reason that the NKVD investigators would have wanted

Vavilov to fabricate testimony against Iakovlev, who by that time had long since been

executed. By 1940, when Vavilov was interrogated, Ezhov and his men too had long

since been arrested, tried, and executed for fabricating false cases against a very large

number of people, and Beria was now in charge of the NKVD. During Beria’s tenure the

cases against large numbers of people falsely accused under Ezhov were reviewed, and

many of them released.

Here, as virtually everywhere in history, there is no absolute proof. But the

evidence suggests that Iakovlev was not lying. Furthermore, Iakovlev’s testimony is

broadly consistent with the confessions of many of the Moscow Trials defendants, of the

Tukhachevsky Affair defendants, and the evidence we have cited above.

According to the volume we have been citing Vavilov’s interrogators claimed in a

report that they had carried out 240 interrogations of Vavilov that occupied 1000 hours.

Vavilov himself claimed in his own letter to Beria (NKVD head at the time) dated April

25 1942 that he had been subjected to 400 interrogations that took 1700 hours! Such

time-consuming and therefore expensive investigations bespeak a genuine attempt to find

out the truth. No such titanic efforts are required either to fabricate an entirely false set of

confessions or to compel a middle-aged academic to fabricate them himself. Moreover,

when it was all completed and Vavilov had been convicted NKVD chief Lavrentii Beria

acceded to Vavilov’s request for clemency. The scientist was in the process of being

moved to the East ahead of the German military advance when he died on January 26

1943.

Confession of Iakovlev’s Wife

In 2004 a short excerpt from just one of the interrogation-confessions of

Sokolovskaia, Iakovlev’s wife, was published. This corresponds exactly to the time

Iakovlev himself was under interrogation.

In his own confession Iakovlev said that he had collaborated with Ian Gamarnik,

head of the Political Department of the Red Army who had committed suicide on May 30,

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1937 when questioned about the Tukhachevsky conspiracy. Iakovlev named his wife as a

friend of Gamarnik’s family. She worked in the film studio “Mosfilm.” According to a

report to Stalin from Ezhov of April 30 1938 Sokolovskaia headed a Trotskyist

organization at her workplace that obtained weapons for a planned uprising.65

Evidently in an attempt to save her own life she said that she knew that her

husband had been doing underground Trotskyist work within the Party since 1923. She

said specifically:

During the past five years Iakovlev has been undertaking active participation in

the underground anti-Soviet organization that stood on Trotskyist positions. He

was in an especially secret (zakonspirirovannom) situation, dissembling in order

to strengthen himself in Party work at attempting to be promoted to the

leadership of the Party. (Lubianka 2 398-9)

Stalin’s note complains that the interrogator did not ask the right questions of

Sokolovskaia:

On the first page is a handwritten annotation: “Com. Ezhov: Which Mikhailov?

They didn’t even ask his name and patronymic . . . what fine investigators!

What’s important is not Iakovlev’s and Sokolovskaia’s past activity but their

sabotage and espionage work during the past year and the recent months of 1937.

We also need to know why both of these scoundrels were going abroad almost

every year. J. Stalin.” (Lubianka B 399 n.)66

Here as in the case of Iakovlev’s interrogation – as in every single case we now

have, in fact – Stalin has annotated the interrogation in such a way as to rule out any

possibility that he had ordered it fabricated or faked. He appears to have been attempting

to learn from the interrogation how deep the conspiracy ran. This is evidence that the

interrogation was genuine. As such, it is also evidence that Iakovlev’s interrogation was

65 Lubianka 2 No. 323 pp. 529-30. Now online <http://www.alexanderyakovlev.org/fond/issues-doc/61342>. 66 Now at <http://www.alexanderyakovlev.org/fond/issues-doc/61211>. Stalin’s remarks alone are in Vol. 18 of the new edition of Stalin’s works; online at <http://grachev62.narod.ru/stalin/t18/t18_065.htm>.

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not faked, and therefore that Iakovlev’s confession about Shmuke and Trotsky’s contacts

with the Nazis is also true.

What concerned Stalin was not the history of Iakovlev’s disloyalty but recent

matters. “The past year and the recent months of 1937” had seen the Tukhachevsky

conspiracy of top military leaders spying for Germany, plus allegations of widespread

conspiratorial activity on the side of Germany and Japan. This too is consistent with

Stalin’s believing that Iakovlev’s conspiracy with Germany was genuine.

Iakovlev’s “Rehabilitation”

Aside from the confession we cite here none of the investigative or court

materials from Iakovlev’s file have ever been made public. We do have the report

(zapiska, or “memorandum,” shorter and/or less formal than a full report) recommending

Iakovlev be posthumously “rehabilitated” dated December 27, 1956 and signed by

Roman Rudenko, General Procuror (Prosecutor) of the USSR.67 It declares Iakovlev

innocent but without giving any evidence whatsoever that he was, in fact, innocent. It is

similar to many other such published “rehabilitation” reports from the Khrushchev and

Gorbachev eras. Elsewhere we have studied a number of these seemingly fraudulent

“reports.” According to the “rehabilitation” memorandum Iakovlev had been named by

“more than 100” other defendants. All their testimony is dismissed on the grounds that

these men have previously been “rehabilitated.” Once they were declared “innocent” their

testimony against others was simply written off as false. This is one sign of their

fraudulent nature.68

The memorandum also declares that NKVD man “Kazakevich”, who had taken

part in the investigation of Iakovlev, had said – evidently in 1956 – that “methods of

physical pressure” were used against Iakovlev. His testimony is not available. Even his

name is not certain. No name and patronymic are given. An NKVD man named

Kozakevich is one of two investigators who signed the confession of Iakovlev that we

have examined.

67 RKEB 2 (2003) No. 30, pp. 215-216; note 41 on p. 808. 68 Furr, Antistalinskaia Podlost’ (Moscow: Algoritm 2007), Chapter 10, 148-175.

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“Methods of physical pressure” can mean almost anything, from real torture –

beatings, for example – to the “third degree,” prolonged sleeplessness, and so on. But

Iakovlev confessed within a couple of days of his arrest, so there was no time for any

prolonged pressure. Moreover, the fact that a suspect was subjected to some kind of

“physical pressure” is not evidence of that suspect’s innocence.

Ezhov could not have known in advance whether Stalin would choose to

interview Iakovlev. Iakovlev had been so close to Stalin, most recently in working on the

new constitution, that it’s probable that Stalin would have interviewed him himself. We

don’t know whether he actually did so because the Russian government has not released

the whole investigative case. If Stalin did insist on seeing Iakovlev, and Iakovlev had

been forced to falsely incriminate himself, the danger that he would inform on Ezhov to

Stalin would have been far too great. For this reason it is very doubtful that Ezhov would

have dared to fabricate a false case against someone as close to Stalin as Iakovlev was.

As we’ve noted above, Stalin’s comments on the interrogations of Iakovlev and his wife

are not consistent with any theory that Stalin was involved in “framing” Iakovlev for

some reason.

We have no evidence that Iakovlev was tortured, beaten, etc. Even if we had

evidence that some kind of real torture had been used against Iakovlev, it would not mean

he was innocent. We’ll discuss this issue below. Nor would it explain why Iakovlev

confessed at trial. We know he did so because Rudenko’s “zapiska” says he did – the full

transcript of his trial has not been declassified.

Tukhachevsky and The Military Leaders

The rest of the evidence we present concerning Trotsky’s collaboration with

Germany and/or Japan comes from the investigative materials connected with the so-

called “Tukhachevsky Affair.” On June 11, 1937 Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, one of

only five marshals of the Red Army, and seven other very high-ranking military

commanders were tried and convicted of collaboration with Trotsky, other oppositionists,

Germany and/or Japan to bring about the overthrow of the Stalin government, the

assassination of its leading members, the facilitation of war between the USSR and its

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major enemies Germany, Japan, and Poland, seizure of power, reversion to capitalism

and an alliance with the Axis countries.

Budennyi’s Letter to Voroshilov

One of the judges at the special military court was Marshal Semion Budennyi. On

June 26, 1937 Budennyi sent a letter to Commissar for Defense Kliment Voroshilov in

which he outlined his impressions of the trial and what it meant.69

This letter has been dishonestly quoted by several Russian writers – dishonestly,

because entirely out of context, as will be seen. For example, among the lines that have

been quoted is this sentence:

PRIMAKOV70 very stubbornly denied that he led a terrorist group consisting of

SHMIDT, KUZ’MICHEV and others, against com. VOROSHILOV.

What has always been omitted are the following passages which follow

immediately after the sentence above:

He denied this on the basis that, he said, TROTSKY had entrusted him,

PRIMAKOV, with a more serious task – to organize an armed uprising in

Leningrad, for which purpose he, PRIMAKOV, was obliged to remain strictly

secret from all terrorist groups, to break his ties with all Trotskyists and Rights

and at the same time to win for himself authority and the absolute trust of the

Party and the Army command.

PRIMAKOV did not, however, deny that he had indeed earlier led a

terrorist group and for that purpose had recommended SHMIDT to the post of

commander of the mechanized corps.

In connection with this special assigment of TROTSKY’S, PRIMAKOV

worked on the 25th Cavalry Division with the divisional commander ZYBIN.

According to him ZYBIN was assigned to meet TROTSKY at the border once

the rebels had taken over Leningrad.

69 We – Furr and Bobrov – are preparing to publish an edition of this important letter. 70 Vitalii Primakov was one of the eight officers tried and executed in June 1937 in the “Tukhachevsky Affair.”

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By omitting these paragraphs a passage in which Primakov confessed to a

somewhat different role in the same conspiracy is made to appear to be a claim of

innocence that implies Primakov was “framed.” This is the same technique that we have

seen employed by Shelepin in misquoting Iakir’s letter to the 22nd Party Congress in 1962.

As another passage in Budennyi’s letter reveals Tukhachevsky had testified that

the German Luftwaffe was prepared to come to the aid of the opposition uprising in

Leningrad.

Tukhachevsky received an instruction from General RUMSHTET71 that the plan

for sabotaging the Red Army should take into account the most likely directions

of the main blows of the German armies: one against the Ukraine – L’vov, Kiev

– and the others, the seizure of Leningrad by the rebels, something that would be

very beneficial to Germany as it could render help to the rebels with its rather

significant air force, which ought to advertise itself as forces coming over to the

rebels from the side of the Soviet forces.

We know from another archival document, Marshal Voroshilov’s address to the

“Aktiv” (officers directly attached) of the Commissariat of Defense on June 9, 1937, that

this information stems from Putna’s confession.72 It concerns what he was told by

German General Erhard Milch, one of the highest ranking commanders of the German

Luftwaffe.73 Reading from an undated confession by Putna Voroshilov stated the

following:

[German Air Force General] Milch directly states – I ask you to say this to

Karakhan, also a spy since 1927 who carried out the negotiations on behalf of

these swine – Milch directly states: “If you can capture Leningrad, the Leningrad

oblast’, you can count on serious help from our side and, mainly, on help from

our airforce, under the guise of forces that have gone over to you from the legal

71 Obviously General Gerd von Rundstedt, later a Field Marshal. See <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Rundstedt>. 72 Some years ago we obtained a partial transcript of this address of Voroshilov’s from a fellow researcher in Moscow. It is now published: Voenniy sovet pri Narodnom Komissare Oborony SSSR. 1-4 iiunia 1937 g.

Dokumenty i Materialy. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2008, pp. 367-423. Voroshilov’s quotation from an as yet unpublished confession by Putna concerning General Milch is on pp. 384-5 of this published edition. 73 See the article on Milch at <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Milch>.

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government. We will give you our air forces in significant quantities with our

own crews.

And, declared Milch, we will be able to render you all this help in the

Leningrad area because this area has a border with Finland with which we, he

said, have excellent relations.

This ties Primakov’s testimony about Trotsky’s role in planning an uprising in

Leningrad together with the projected German role in the same uprising. A number of

other defendants, both military and civilian, confessed to discussions with German

generals including von Runstedt and Milch.

In a segment from an interrogation of May 21, 1937 Primakov said:

. . . The bloc of Trotskyists and Rights and the organization of the common

traitorous anti-Soviet military conspiracy led to the union of all the

counterrevolutionary forces within the (Workers’ and Peasants’) Red Army . . .

This anti-Soviet political bloc and military conspiracy, personally headed by the

base fascist Trotsky, . . . (Kantor, Voina 374)

(It appears that Primakov calls Trotsky a “fascist” here because, according to Primakov,

Trotsky had conspired with fascist Germany against the USSR.)

Budennyi also reported that the military figures were not planning to take

leadership from Trotsky or the Rights indefinitely.

. . . KORK confessed that he was aware that the leaders of the military-

fascist counterrevolutionary organization regarded their ties to Trotsky and

the Rights as a temporary situation. TUKHACHEVSKY had spoken to

KORK to the effect that the Trotskyists, Rights et al. were only temporary

fellow-travelers, and when the armed coup had been effected he,

TUKHACHEVSKY would play the role of Bonaparte. And on November

29, 1934, according to KORK’s confession, TUKHACHEVSKY, in

Kork’s apartment, had stated this unequivocally to all those present.

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Colonel Viktor Alksnis and The Transcript of the Tukhachevsky Trial

The transcript of the June 11, 1937 trial of Tukhachevsky and the seven other

commanders has never been made public. Its text is still so top-secret in Russia that no

researcher, no matter how trusted, is allowed to read it today. But in 1990, shortly before

the end of the USSR General Viktor Alksnis, military leader, member of the Duma

(Soviet Parliament), and grandson of one of the judges at this 1937 military trial, was

given permission by the KGB (successor to the MVD – NKVD) to read the transcript.

Perhaps the KGB thought Alksnis would be sympathetic to the story that the

military men had been framed. After all his own grandfather, Komandarm 2nd rank (=

Lieutenant General) Iakov I. Alksnis had been arrested in November 1937 and then tried

and executed as a conspirator in July 1938, only months after he had served as one of the

judges in the military panel that judged Tukhachevsky and the rest.

Instead Alksnis, interviewed in a Russian nationalist journal in 2000 and again by

researcher Vladimir L. Bobrov shortly afterwards said he was convinced by the transcript

that some conspiracy had in fact taken place. From the interview in the journal Elementy

in 2000:

My grandfather and Tukhachevsky were friends. And grandfather was on the

judicial panel that judged both Tukhachevsky and Eideman. My interest in this

case became even stronger after the well-known publications of [former]

procuror Viktorov, who wrote that Iakov Alksnis was very active at the trial,

harrassed the accused. . . .

But in the trial transcript everything was just the opposite. Grandfather

only asked two or three questions during the entire trial. But the strangest thing is

the behavior of the accused. Newspaper accounts [of the Gorbachev-era – GF]

claim that all the defendants denied their guilt completely. But according to the

transcript they fully admitted their guilt. I realize that an admission of guilt itself

can be the result of torture. But in the transcript it was something else entirely: a

huge amount of detail, long dialogues, accusations of one another, a mass of

precision. It’s simply impossible to stage-manage something like this. . . . I know

nothing about the nature of the conspiracy. But of the fact that there really did

exist a conspiracy within the Red Army and that Tukhachevsky participated in it

I am completely convinced today.

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. . .

It appears as though back there, in the 1930s, there stands some type of “canon”

that might be fired at us, at our times. And then everything could turn out

completely differently. And in the meantime . . . in the meantime a certain

conception of those events has been created, and everything is done to sustain

that conception. (Alksnis)

From a followup interview of Col. Alksnis by Vladimir L. Bobrov:

Alksnis: . . . I turned the pages of the transcript and had more questions than

answers. I came away with the impression that, obviously, there had really been a

conspiracy. . . . But this is what struck me: in the transcript there are parts which

attest to the sincerity of what the defendants said (no matter who claims that the

trial was an organized show, that they worked on the defendants specially so that

they would give the necessary confessions.)

Imagine this. Let’s say, Tukhachevsky is telling about a meeting with the

German military attaché in a dacha near Moscow . . . and at that moment

Primakov interrupts him and says “Mikhail Nikolaevich, you are mistaken. This

meeting did not take place in your office at the dacha, but was on the veranda.” I

think that it would have been impossible to “direct” things such that

Tukhachevsky said precisely that and that Primakov would then make a

correction like that.

Bobrov: Very well. But was there anything there that made you think that the

trial had been scripted and directed anyway?

Alksnis: No, it would have been impossible to script and direct a trial such as is

in the transcript.

Bobrov: That is, you wish to state that, having read the transcript, you did not

find in it any traces of any kind of staging?

Alksnis: Yes, yes. On top of that all of them confessed, and when they all

admitted guilt in their last words, stating that they had been participants in the

conspiracy and knowing that after that execution awaited them, it is just

impossible to imagine that they forced them all to make such admissions and

declarations.

. . .

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Bobrov: What was the main point of accusation of the “conspirators”?

Alksnis: Everything was there: espionage, preparation for a military coup,

sabotage [wrecking]. . . .

Bobrov: And what does “espionage” mean? You were talking about the meeting

at the dacha. . . .

Alksnis: Yes, yes, with the German military attaché. They were talking about

arranging coordination with the German military, contacts were going on with

them. . . .

Bobrov: One last question. In your interview with “Elementy” you talked about

some kind of “cannon” that might shoot at our own times from back in the 30s.

What did you have in mind?

Alksnis: If an objective research project on the events of those years were to be

done, free of ideological dogmas, then a great deal could change in our attitude

towards those years and towards the personalities of that epoch. And so it would

be a “bomb” that would cause some problems. . . . (Bobrov)


It is not surprising that the transcript of the Tukhachevsky trial is top-secret once

again. As far as we can determine no one has been permitted to read it since Alksnis. But

we do have the Budennyi letter. It is by far the most direct evidence of the testimony

given at the trial that we have. Alksnis’ two accounts confirm the accuracy of Budennyi’s

account of the trial. For example, Alksnis confirms that the defendants confessed to all

the charges and in some detail, something that Budennyi’s letter also states.

It would be hard to overestimate the significance of Budennyi’s testimony. It is

simply not credible that eight battle-hardened military men could have been forced to

falsely confess at trial to such devastating charges, in such detail, and in the manner in

which they did. Nor is there any evidence that they were forced to falsely confess in the

first place, even before the trial.

Like the trial transcript itself the letter remains top-secret. We located it in a little-

known and disorganized archive and are preparing it for publication. For Budennyi as for

Col. Alksnis there is no question at all of the guilt of the generals, all of whom confessed

it and gave details. This is also the case of the published commentary by General Belov,

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another of the judges. Belov’s letter to Voroshilov was published in 1996, presumably

because he makes very few substantive remarks about the specific charges. But Belov

was also convinced of the generals’ guilt (Belov). We do not examine it here because

Belov says nothing specifically about Trotsky and the Germans or Japanese.

Significance of the Tukhachevsky Trial Evidence

The Budennyi letter to Voroshilov and Col. Alksnis’ account of his reading the

transcript of the “Tukhachevsky Affair” trial together constitute one of the most

important discoveries in the historiography of the Soviet Union. Thanks to them we now

know as certainly as we will ever know that the military defendants in this trial were, in

fact, guilty of what they confessed to.

This in itself completely dismantles the canonical interpretation of Soviet history.

For example, it means that the testimony at the Third Moscow “show” trial, the March

1938 “Bukharin-Rykov” trial, was truthful insofar as it confirms the testimony given by

Tukhachevsky and the other military men. It also confirms testimony about Trotsky’s

German and Japanese collaboration that was given by those defendants at the Second

Moscow Trial of January 1937, the “Piatakov-Rykov” trial, since that is also confirmed

by the Tukhachevsky trial testimony.

If we had no other evidence at all to this effect the testimony of the military

figures would be very strong. And of course we do have much other evidence. All of it is

consistent with what we now know of the Tukhachevsky trial testimony. For our present

purposes this is the strongest possible evidence that Trotsky was indeed conspiring with

the Nazi government and German military.

Dreitser

The NKVD investigators of the 1930s referred to the interlocking conspiracy

cases as the “klubok,” or “tangle.” This metaphor referred to the fact that the various

separate conspiracies were intertwined with each other, at least on the leadership level. It

also serves to illustrate how the NKVD “unravelled” them. Once one minor conspiracy

was discovered it led by persistent investigation to others.

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Efim Dreitser, a defendant at the first Moscow Trial of 1936 and a person who

claimed to be in personal contact with Trotsky, named Putna at the 1936 Trial as a

Trotskyist conspirator who also had direct links to Trotsky (Dreitser had been chief of

Trotsky’s bodyguard during the 1920s). This was evidently just one of a number of bits

of evidence that led to Putna’s arrest, just as Kamenev’s naming Radek, Sokol’nikov,

Bukharin and others provided “threads” that led to second and third trials. Dreitser’s

investigation file confirms his confessions at trial and close ties to Putna and Iakir,

another of the later Tukhachevsky Trial defendants. A close member of Dreitser’s family

and his only surviving relative has confirmed that her great-uncle Efim was indeed close

to high-ranking Red Army men, including Putna, well-known as a Trotskyist, named by

defendants in all three Moscow Trials, tried and executed as one of the eight military

leaders in the Tukhachevsky Affair.74

Dmitry Shmidt, a military commander who was also arrested and questioned in

1936, testified to Putna’s close and conspiratorial connection with Trotsky.

In 1927 when I joined the Trotskyists I learned from DREITSER,

OKHOTNIKOV and PUTNA that PUTNA was one of the members of the

military center of the Trotskyist organization and was carrying out important

organizational work in the Red Army. He was responsible for that work to

Trotsky personally. In 1927 or 1928 PUTNA was assigned by the Revolutionary

Military Council to be military attaché to Japan. At that time I had a meeting with

PUTNA before his departure. He told me Trotsky used to come to his apartment

to give him a whole series of instructions and tasks in connection with his going

abroad.75

So the NKVD had other evidence, perhaps a lot of it, about Putna’s activities.

Concerning Shmidt’s testimony specifically, it’s difficult to imagine what foreign

instructions, other than conspiratorial ones, Trotsky might have been giving Putna in

1927, since Trotsky had long since (January 1925) resigned from his military posts. 74 Personal communication from Svetlana M. Chervonnaya, daughter of Dreitser’s niece. Ms Chervonnaya, an Americanist and skilled researcher on Cold-War history and Dreitser’s only surviving relative, has been permitted to study Dreitser’s investigative file. 75 “N.6. Z protokolu dopity D.A. Shmidta vid 31 serpnia 1936 r.,” in Sergiy Kokin, Oleksandr Pshennikov, “Bez stroku davnosti,” Z Arkhiviv VUChK-GPU-NKVD-KGB No. 1-2 (4/5), 1997 (In Ukrainian).

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Kantor’s Four Articles76

In 2005 Iulia Kantor, a Russian graduate student in history and journalist,

published a series of articles and a book77 on Marshal Tukhachevsky. Kantor does not

investigate whether Tukhachevsky was guilty or not but, like Cherushev, takes it for

granted that Tukhachevsky was the innocent victim of a frameup by Stalin. It’s probably

no coincidence, therefore, that like Cherushev Kantor was granted access to some

documentary materials others have not been permitted to see including, in Kantor’s case,

some of the Tukhachevsky investigative materials. Additionally she claims that she was

given permission by Tukhachevsky’s family to see his investigative file – something that

is strictly limited in Russian to next-of-kin and normally forbidden to all others,

researchers included.

Kantor used these materials in her doctoral dissertation as well as her books and

some articles. Anyone who studies only the texts of the primary sources that Kantor

quotes without regard to her tendentious commentary will realize that these sources

strongly support Tukhachevsky’s guilt. Some of these quotations involve

Tukhachevsky’s allegations concerning Trotsky.

No complete interrogations of Vitovt Putna have been published. Only excerpts

from them have been published; we will briefly examine them below. But according to

what we have of Tukhachevsky’s testimony Putna was in direct contact with Trotsky and

passed on to Tukhachevsky the information that he, Trotsky, had direct contacts with the

German government and General Staff. This is consistent with what we’ve seen of

Radek’s testimony both before and during the January 1937 trial.

Tukhachevsky claimed to have been in direct contact by letter with Sedov through

Putna.

I inform the investigation that in 1935 Putna brought me a note from Sedov in

which it said that Trotsky considers it very desirable that I establish closer ties

76 Kantor’s four articles were published in Istoriia Gosudarstva i Prava (2006). This legal journal is very hard to obtain outside of Russia. It is intermittently available at a Russian legal website at <http://law-news.ru/up/u11/post_1130954400.html>. The text at this site is not often available, and is completely unformatted. For the convenience of readers able to use Russian I have reformatted and republished the text of all four articles <http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/kantor_4articles_igp06.pdf>. 77 Kantor, Iulia. Voina i mir Mikhaila Tukhachevskogo. Moscow: Izdatel’skii Dom Ogoniok “Vremia,” 2005.

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with the Trotskyist commander cadres. Through Putna I orally answered with my

agreement, and burned the note from Sedov. (Kantor 2006, 5; Kantor, Voina 378)

Tukhachevsky also said that in 1932 he received a “directive” from Trotsky to

form a conspiratorial military organization, something he had been preparing to do in any

case.

Long before the creation of the antisoviet military-Trotskyist plot I grouped

around myself, over the course of a number of years, men who were hostile to

Soviet authority, dissatisfied with their positions as commanders, and conspired

with them against the leadership of the Party and government. Therefore, when in

1932 I received a directive from Trotsky about the creation of an antisoviet

organization in the army I already virtually had devoted cadres ready on whom I

could rely in this work. (Kantor 2006, 5; Kantor, Voina 378-9)

According to Tukhachevsky Putna had direct contact with Trotsky concerning the

latter’s ties to the German government and General Staff and passed on news of this

orally to Tukhachevsky.

Putna told me orally that Trotsky had set up direct contact with the German

fascist government and General Staff. (Kantor 2006, 5; Kantor, Voina 378-9)

Tukhachevsky said that Vladimir Romm had told him that Trotsky was relying on

Hitler’s help in his struggle against Soviet power. We know from Romm’s testimony at

the 1937 Trial, which we have reviewed above, that Romm claimed to have been in direct

contact with Trotsky.

Romm told me that Trotsky is expecting Hitler to come to power and that he is

counting on Hitler’s aid in Trotsky’s battle against Soviet authority.

(Kantor 2006, 7; Kantor, Voina 381)

Tukhachevsky reiterated that he had indeed had contact with Trotsky, and also

that he himself had collaborated with German intelligence, though in the following

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passage he does not explicitly say that Trotsky had told him of his own German or

Japanese connections.

The transcript of the interrogation of the accused Tukhachevsky of June 9, 1937:

I fully confirm my confessions given during the preliminary investigation

concerning my leading participation in the military-Trotskyist plot, my ties to the

Germans, my past participation in antisoviet groupings. I admit my guilt in that I

transmitted to German intelligence secret information and facts concerning the

defense of the USR. I also confirm my ties with Trotsky and Dombal’.

(Kantor 2006, 15; Kantor, Voina 406-7)

Assessing the Evidence: Kantor

Kantor received the permission of the Tukhachevsky family and the Russian

government to gain access to some of the investigative materials for her long biography

of Tukhachevsky. Though she does not admit as much it seems that she was not

permitted to read everything. Specifically it appears that she was not allowed to read the

transcript of the trial of Tukhachevsky and the rest. If she had read it and yet completely

omitted its contents from her articles and book Kantor would be guilty not just of being

guided by her own preconceived ideas, but of gross deception. She is guilty of deceiving

her readers in any case, since she never tells us what she was permitted to see and what

was kept from her.

Kantor takes the official position that the Marshal and all the other military

figures were innocent victims of a frameup. Therefore she would surely have been given

any evidence that this was so. But she is unable to cite any. This is very significant, since

it suggests that no such evidence exists.

She also ignores some of the evidence that they were guilty – notably, some

already well-known to researchers because it is in the Shvernik Report, which has been

published (see below). The quotations from the Tukhachevsky investigation file

published in Kantor’s 2005 book are also contained in her four academic articles.

The passages Kantor quotes strongly support all the other evidence we have cited.

We have only quoted the passages from Kantor’s work that directly inculpate Trotsky

with Germany. The reliability of their testimony concerning Trotsky’s collaboration with

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the Germans is predicated upon the truthfulness of the rest of their testimony – that is,

upon their guilt. Kantor is committed to asserting the innocence of all these men rather

than to investigating whether they were guilty or not. But the evidence she quotes, as

opposed to her tendentious commentary on it, gives strong evidence of their guilt. This is

also strong evidence that they told the truth about their collaboration with Trotsky and his

with Germany.

Tukhachevsky’s Confessions

In 1994 the texts of two of Tukhachevsky’s confessions were published in Russia.

In them Tukhachevsky repeats that Romm told him Trotsky was relying on Hitler. As we

saw above Romm confessed to having been a courrier between Trotsky and conspirators

within the USSR.78

. . . Romm also passed on that it was Trotsky’s hope that Hitler would come to

power and would support him, Trotsky, in his struggle against Soviet power.

– Main 159; Molodaia Gvardiia (henceforth MG) 9 (1994), 133. (Evidently the

same passage as above)

Tukhachevsky repeats that he had told Kork (another of the eight defendants) that

he had had contact with Trotsky and the Rights.

I told Kork that I had links both with Trotsky and the Rightists and tasked him to

recruit new members in the Moscow military district. . . . (Main 160; MG 9, 134)

According to Tukhachevsky Putna, another of the eight defendants and as we have

already seen a long-standing supporter of Trotsky’s, admitted to him in 1933 that he was

in touch with Trotsky as well as with Smirnov, a Trotskyist within the USSR. Putna later

78 These confessions of Tukhachevsky’s have been translated and published in Steven J. Main, “The Arrest and ‘Testimony’ of Marshal of the Soviet Union M.N. Tukhachevsky (May-June 1937),” Journal of Slavic

Military Studies 10, No. 1 (March 1997), 151-195. All the passages dealing with Trotsky were published in Molodaia Gvardiia issues 9 or 10 of 1994. We have used Main’s English text for the convenience of readers and made silent corrections in a few places where we disagreed with Main’s translation, which we have compared with the originals.

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received an appointment as military attaché (in 1934, as attaché to Great Britain) and so

was assigned to be the contact person between Trotsky and the other conspirators.

Upon Putna’s and Gorbachev’s return from the Far East – I believe this was in

1933 – I spoke with each of them separately. Putna quickly admitted that he was

already in contact with Trotsky and with Smirnov. I suggested to him to join the

ranks of the military-Trotskyite conspiracy, telling him that I had direct links

with Trotsky. Putna immediately agreed [to join]. Later, following his

appointment as military attaché, he was tasked to maintain the link between

Trotsky and the center of the anti-Soviet military-Trotskyite conspiracy.

(Main 160; MG 9, 134)

Tukhachevsky said that in 1933 or 1934 Romm had instructions from Trotsky that

the “German fascists” would help the Trotskyists, and so the military conspirators should

help both the German and the Japanese General Staffs in sabotage, diversions, and

assassinations against members of the Soviet government. Tukhachevsky said he passed

“Trotsky’s instructions” to the conspiratorial leadership, implying that he himself

accepted them.

Round about this time, 1933/1934, Romm visited me in Moscow and told me that

he had to pass on Trotsky’s new instructions. Trotsky pointed out that it was no

longer feasible to restrict our activities to simply recruiting and organizing cadres,

that it was necessary to adopt a more active program, that German Fascism

would render the Trotskyists assistance in their struggle with Stalin’s leadership

and that therefore the military conspiracy must supply the German General Staff

with intelligence data, as well as working hand in glove with the Japanese

General Staff, carrying out disruptive activities in the army, prepare diversions

and terrorist acts against members of the government. These instructions of

Trotsky I communicated to the center of our conspiracy. (Main 160-161; MG 9,

134)

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In another part of this published confession Tukhachevsky asserts that he got other

instructions from Trotsky via Piatakov, rather than through Romm, Putna, or directly to

himself.

During the winter of 1935/1936, Pyatakov told me that Trotsky had now asked us

to ensure the [future] defeat of the USSR in war, even if this meant giving the

Ukraine to the Germans and the Primor’ye to the Japanese. In order to prepare

the USSR’s defeat, all forces, both within the USSR and outside the USSR would

have to be made ready; in particular, Pyatakov stated that Trotsky would carry

out a decisive struggle to plant his people in the Comintern. Pyatakov stated that

such conditions would mean the restoration of capitalism in the country.

As we received Trotsky’s instructions on unleashing a campaign of

sabotage activity, espionage, diversionary and terrorist activity, the center of the

conspiracy, which included not only me, but also Feld’man, Eideman, Kamenev,

Primakov, Uborevich, Iakir and those closely associated with it, Gamarnik and

Kork, issued various instructions to the members of the conspiracy, based on

Trotsky’s directives. (Main 163; MG 10, 257)

Tukhachevsky claims that he also received direct written instructions via Putna

from Sedov, who of course was passing on Trotsky’s instructions. Putna assured him that

Trotsky had established direct ties to the German government and General Staff.

In the autumn of 1935, Putna came to my office and handed over a note from

Sedov, in Trotsky’s name, insisting that I more energetically attract Trotskyite

cadres to the military conspiracy and more actively use them. I told Putna to say

that this would be done. In addition, Putna told me that Trotsky had established

dirrect links with Hitler’s government and the General Staff, and that the center

of the anti-Soviet military Trotskyite conspiracy should task itself to prepare

defeats on those fronts where the German Army would operate.

During the winter of 1935/1936, as I have already mentioned, I had a talk

with Pyatakov, during which the latter passed on another directive from Trotsky

[to the effect] to ensure the unconditional defeat of the USSR in war with Hitler

and Japan, as well as the break-up of the Ukraine and the Primor’ye from the

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USSR. These instructions meant that it was necessary to establish ties with the

Germans in order to define where they intended to depoy their armies and where

necessary to prepare the defeats of the Soviet armies. (Main 166; MG 10, 261)

This passage in Tukhachevsky’s published confession confirms what Budennyi

reported to Voroshilov in his letter of June 26, 1937. Evidently Tukhachevsky restated

this at the trial and inserted a comment that von Runstedt must have known this

information through Trotsky.

At the end of January 1936, I had to travel to London to attend the funeral of the

British King. During the funeral procession, first by foot and then on the train,

General Rundstedt – the head of the German government’s military delegation –

spoke to me. It was obvious that the German General Staff had already been

informed by Trotsky. Rundstedt openly told me that the German General Staff

was aware that I stood at the head of a military conspiracy in the Red Army and

that he, Rundstedt, had been instructed to begin talks about mutually interesting

matters. (Main 166; MG 10, 261)

A few pages later Tukhachevsky puts Trotsky’s and Runstedt’s instructions

together.

Taking into account Trotsky’s directive to prepare for defeat on that front where

the Germans would attack, as well as General Rundstedt’s instruction to prepare

for defeat on the Ukrainian front, I proposed to Iakir to make the German task

easier by diversionary-sabotage tactics leading to the fall of the Letichev fortified

region, the commandant of which was a member of the conspiracy, Sablin. (Main

185; MG 10, 264)

Assessing the Evidence: Tukhachevsky’s Confessions

Only a few of Tukhachevsky’s confessions have been made public. We are

fortunate to have any of them at all. They were published in the early 1990s when the

promise of glasnost’ (“openness”) was still in the air. In 2006 one confession of Nikolai

Ezhov’s was published. Ezhov confirmed the existence of several groups of military

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conspirators including that around Tukhachevsky. Ezhov also named some, at least, of

the German military figures with whom they and he himself were jointly in touch.79 To

that extent Ezhov’s and Tukhachevsky’s confessions mutually confirm each other.

Frinovsky strongly confirmed the guilt of the Rightists, including Bukharin, some of

whom, like Grin’ko, claimed direct conspiratorial contact with Trotsky while others, like

Bukharin, claimed indirect knowledge of Trotsky’s dealings with the Germans through

Radek.

Other Documents of the “Tukhachevsky Affair”: The “Shvernik Report”

As we have stated above, during the 22nd Party Congress in October 1961 Nikita

Khrushchev and his supporters in the Soviet leadership leveled an even stronger attack

against Stalin than Khrushchev’s 1956 “Secret Speech” had been. After the Congress

Stalin’s body was removed from Lenin’s tomb and a new wave of materials attacking

Stalin and those closely associated with him was published. This anti-Stalin campaign –

for so it may be called – ended shortly after Khrushchev was removed from office at the

Central Committee meeting of October 1964 by Leonid Brezhnev and others.

In early 1962 the Presidium (formerly the Politburo, in effect Khrushchev himself)

authorized a blue-ribbon commission to investigate the trials and executions of the 1930s

and especially the so-called Tukhachevsky Affair.80 This commission seems to have had

total access to all the investigative and other materials concerning the repressions of the

1930s. Its purpose seems to have been to find further information for attacks on Stalin

and his supporters, and justificatory materials for further “rehabilitations.” In fact, it

provided little exculpatory evidence but quite a bit of further evidence that the accused

were guilty!

The report was issued in two parts. The Zapiska (memorandum) devoted mainly

to the Military Purges and Tukhachevsky Affair, was issued in 1963. A further part, the

Spravka (= information, report) is dated 1964. Neither seems to have been used by

Khrushchev or given to Soviet writers to promote Khrushchev’s “line.”

79 Available online at <http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/ezhovru.html>; also now at <http://www.alexanderyakovlev.org/fond/issues-doc/58654>. 80 There had been an earlier commission, called the “Molotov Commission.”

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The Shvernik Reports were both published after the end of the USSR in a

mysterious journal, Voennyi Arkhivy Rossii, dated 1993, that never had another issue. But

since that time the Reports have been published several more times and it is readily

available. It’s fair to say that these reports constitute the largest single published

collection of excerpts and quotations from investigative materials of the 1930s

repressions.

We cite here all the passages from the Shvernik Commission reports that bear

directly on the specific topic of this article: Trotsky’s purported collaboration with

Germany and Japan. There are a great many other passages, both in these reports and

elsewhere in the available investigative materials, that bear on Trotsky’s involvement in

the general opposition conspiracies, for example to assassinate Stalin and others. Since

these allegations are not the subject of our present study we will ignore them here.

From the “Zapiska”81

On March 25 1936 Yagoda informed Stalin that Trotsky was giving directives

through agents of the Gestapo to Trotskyists inside the USSR about carrying out

terrorist activity, and that even in prisons Trotskyists were trying to create

militant terrorist groups and that the leader of the Trotskyists in the USSR was

I.N. Smirnov. (Zapiska 557)

. . .

The sentence of the court states that Tukhachevsky and the other defendants,

“being leaders of an antisoviet military-fascist organization, have violated their

military duty (oath), have betrayed their country, have established ties with

military circles in Germany and with enemy of the people L. Trotsky and

according to their directives have prepared the defeat of the Red Army in the

event of an attack on the USSR by foreign aggressors, specifically, of fascist

Germany, and with the goal of destroying the defensive capability of the USSR

have engaged in espionage and sabotage in the units of the Red Army and in

enterprises of military significance, and also have been preparing terrorist acts

against the leaders of the AUCP(b) and the Soviet government.” (605)

81 This long report has not been translated. We take it from RKEB 2 541-670. It is available for download at <http://perpetrator2004.narod.ru/documents/Great_Terror/Shvernik_Report.rar>. The Spravka alone is also available online at the Russian language Wikisource resource in nine parts at <http://tinyurl.com/spravka>.

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From the “Spravka”:

Already at the interrogation of May 14, 1937 Primakov named his “co-

conspirators” and stated about Iakir:

“The Trotskyist organization considered that Iakir was most suitable for

the post of People’s Commissar [for Defense] instead of Voroshilov. . . .

We considered that Iakir was the strictist example of a conspiratorial

Trotskyist and admitted that he – Iakir – was personally connected with

Trotsky and that it ws possible that he was carrying out completely secret,

independent tasks unknown to ourselves.” . . . (Spravka 676)

Continuing the “processing” of Primakov, the organs of the NKVD on May 21

1937 were able to obtain from him “hand-written confessions” that

Tukhachevsky, who was connected to Trotsky, was at the head of the conspiracy.

In addition in this interrogation Primakov named 40 prominent military workers

as members of the military-Trotskyist conspiracy in the army.

On May 16 1937 Ezhov sent this interrogation transcript to Stalin, Molotov,

Voroshilov, and Kaganovich. In the accompanying letter Ezhov

wrote:

“I am sending you the transcript of the interrogation of Putna V.K. of

May 15 of this year. Putna confesses that in 1935 he personally gave a

letter from Trotsky to Tukhachevsky with a direct invitation to take part

in the Trotskyist conspiracy. After familiarizing himself with this letter

Tukhachevsky assigned Putna to transmit the message that Trotsky could

rely upon him. Putna names as members of the military antisoviet

Trotskyist organization Primakov, Kuz’michev, Shmidt, Lapin – all of

whom have been arrested; Zenek, the former commander of the

Leningrad military school of tank technique, Klochko, former military

attaché of the USSR to Turkey; Gorodzensky, former commander of

economic supply of the Prmor’ye group, Kornel’, former worker of the

Foreign Department of the OGPU [basically, a predecessor to the NKVD]

and Adamovich, former chairman of the Council of People’s

Commissars of the Belorussian SSR [i.e. head of the government of the

Belorussian republic].” (677)

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In the indictment it is asserted that in April – May 1937 the organs of the

NKVD discovered and liquidated in the city of Moscow a military-Trotskyist

conspiracy, in the “center” of leadership of which were Gamarnik, Tukhachevsky,

Iakir, Uborevich, Kork, Eideman and Fel’dman. The military-Trotskyist

organization, which all those accused in this case were members, was formed in

1932-1933 upon the direct instructions of the German general staff and of

Trotsky. It was connected with the Trotskyist center and the Bukharin-Rykov

group of Rightists, was involved in sabotage, diversions, terror and was preparing

the overthrow of the government and the seizure of power with the aim of

restoring capitalism in the USSR. (688)

Iakir’s address at the court trial in connection with the plots of the

organizers, set the line for the other defendants also to expose the machinations

of Trotsky and of the fascist governments against the USSR, and in addition

emphasized the role of Tukhachevsky in the conspiracy in every way. (690)

Tukhachevsky was also forced to confirm . . . in court: “When in 1932 Romm

brought me Trotsky’s proposal to gather the Trotskyist cadres, I agreed to do this.

Therefore I consider the beginning of the organization of our military conspiracy

to have been 1932.” (695)

Putna testified about Tukhachevsky’s ties with Sedov and Trotsky.

Specifically, he declared during the investigation that, finding himself in London

in September 1935 and learning that he was being summoned to Moscow, he

reported about this to Sedov, Trotsky’s son, in Paris. From Sedov he received by

special delivery a package in which were a note from Sedov to Putna and a

“letter of recommendation, written and signed personally by Trotsky” for

Tukhachevsky. Putna carried out Sedov’s task and during the first days of

October 1935 supposedly handed Tukhachevsky Trotsky’s letter. Tukhachevsky

familiarized himself with the letter and asked Putna to “transmit orally that

Trotsky could count on him.”

During the investigation Tukhachevsky only mentioned Sedov’s letter

that Putna had supposedly transmitted to him, and never said anything about the

letter from Trotsky that Putna testified about. (695)

On May 26, 1937 Tukhachevsky wrote the following statement: “. . . I

state that I admit the existence of an antisoviet military-Trotskyist conspiracy

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and that I was at its head . . . the foundation of the conspiracy relates to the year

1932.”

On May 29 1937 Ezhov interrogated Tukhachevsky. As a result of this

interrogation there appeared the following confessions by Tukhachevsky:

“Already in 1928 I was brought into the Rightist organization by Enukidze. In

1934 I personally made contact with Bukharin. I established espionage ties with

the Germans in 1925, when I used to travel to Germany for study and

maneuvers. . . . On my trip to London in 1936 Putna arranged for me a meeting

with Sedov. . . . I was connected in this conspiracy with Fel’dman, S.S. Kamenev,

Iakir, Eideman, Enukidze, Bukharin, Karakhan, Pyatakov, I.N. Smirnov, Yagoda,

Osepian and a number of others.” (681-2)

. . . the investigation obtained their [Tukhachevsky’s and Putna’s]

“admissions” of a personal meeting with Sedov, supposedly arranged for

Tukhachevsky by Putna in 1936 in a café in Paris. Meanwhile detailed

information about Tukhachevsky’s stay in Paris from February 10 to 16 1936

came from Ventsov, Soviet military attaché to France, and from the organs of the

NKVD, but this information contained nothing about his meeting with Sedov. In

the course of the present verification Afanas’ev, a former worker of the Foreign

Section of the NKVD, member of the CPSU since 1923, expatiated upon this

matter:

“Between 1932 and 1938 I was continuously in illegal work abroad. I

headed the illegal resident buro in Paris which mainly worked on the

activities of Trotsky’s son Sedov and his circle. . . . We were up to date

on the most secret conspiratorial activity of Trotsky and Sedov.

Therefore when you pose me the question of whether meetings between

Sedov and Tukhachevsky, Putna, and other military figures of the Soviet

Union could have taken place, I can assert that that could not be true . . .

the agent reports and documentary materials we obtained in the process

of our work on Trotsky, Sedov, Kleman and in part on the ROVS in Paris

do not confirm either directly or indirectly the accusations that were

brought against the military figures of the Red Army in connection with

the case of Tukhachevsky, Kork, Gamarnik, Putna, and others.” (695-696)

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The language of the Shvernik Report makes it clear that its authors proceeded on

the preconceived assumption that no such conspiracy existed. It was designed to provide

“evidence” – likely-looking materials – for citation in further “rehabilitations.” Soviet

historians and researchers, as we have seen, were not to be permitted access to the

archives themselves.

In the case of Tukhachevsky’s alleged meeting with Sedov in the Paris café in

1936 the Report cites Ventsov, Soviet military attaché to France, who reported nothing

about it. Ventsov-Krants had been very close to Trotsky. According to an archival

document cited by Cherushev he had helped Trotsky write the book How The Revolution

Armed Itself.82 The report also cites an undated “former worker of the Foreign division of

the NKVD” named Afanas’ev – no first name or patronymic are given – who claimed

that Soviet intelligence in France were closely following information about Sedov and

Trotsky and knew nothing about any such meeting or any of the activities mentioned in

the Tukhachevsky case.

It’s worth making several points here. First, the fact that Ventsov and Afanas’ev

were told nothing about such a meeting cannot prove that such a meeting never took

place. It only means that they claim they did not know of it. Afanas’ev’s claim that Soviet

intelligence knew about “the most secret conspiratorial activities of Trotsky and Sedov,”

and so knew that Sedov could not have met with Tukhachevsky, is empty for another

reason. At or shortly after the time of the alleged meeting – late January or early February

1936 – Soviet intelligence man Mark Zborowski became Leon Sedov’s closest confidant.

We have Zborowski’s reports back to Moscow. But Zborowski himself was not privy to

all of Sedov’s secrets, and did not accompany him everywhere. Zborowski’s handwritten

notes and reports are in the archives and have been published, while we do not even

know Afanas’ev’s name. So the claim that Soviet intelligence knew about all Trotsky’s

and Sedov’s “most secret conspiratorial activities” cannot be true.

Rudenko’s Letter to Molotov

On April 13, 1956 the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU passed a

decree establishing a commission to be chaired by V.M. Molotov to study the materials

82 N.S. Cherushev. 1937 god. Elita Krasnoi Armii na golgofe. Moscow: Veche, 2003 p. 208.

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of the “public trials.”83 The commission proved unsatisfactory to all concerned. It was

sharply divided between the three men who had been closest to Stalin and others who

were Khrushchev’s people. On December 10 1956 it issued a compromise report

exonerating Tukhachevsky and the military men but refusing to consider rehabilitating

any of the defendants in the public trials.84 Since we know that Molotov continued to be

firmly convinced of Tukhachevsky’s guilt we can assume this was, indeed, a compromise.

In 1957 Molotov, Malenkov and Kaganovich were dismissed from the Presidium for

attempting to have Khrushchev removed from office.

The Molotov Commission did study a lot of materials, but only some of their

documents have been made public. We will quote below from a report to that

commission from Rudenko, the General Prosecutor of the USSR. Rudenko was a staunch

supporter of Khrushchev; it was his office that would have to issue recommendations to

the Soviet Supreme Court to get convictions reversed, the legal aspect of “rehabilitation.”

Rudenko’s report has not been published. It was obtained by Krasnaia Zvezda (“Red

Star”), the military daily newspaper in Russia today as it was during Soviet times. We

obtained a copy of it in 2002. Once again, we will only reproduce quotations that deal

with the question of Trotsky and Germany/Japan, ignoring other aspects of this important

document. Passages of special interest to us are in italics.

Only on May 15, almost ten months after his arrest, after confessions about the

military conspiracy had been obtained from Medvedev, were confessions also

obtained from Putna about his counterrevolutionary ties with Tukhachevsky. At

this interrogation Putna confessed that in September 1935 he received Trotsky’s

directive concerning the attraction to the Trotskyist organization of high-ranking

military men. Trotsky also declared that he was aware that Tukhachevsky and

S.S. Kamenev were already carrying out counterrevolutionary work in the army,

and that it was essential to contact them. With this Trotsky handed a note for

Tukhachevsky, in which he proposed that he unite with the Trotskyist center for

83 Reabilitatsiia. Kak Eto Bylo. T. 2, No. 4 p. 70. Tukhachevsky was included even though his trial had not been public. 84 RKEB 2 204-207; available online at <http://perpetrator2004.narod.ru/documents/kirov/Molotov_ Commission_Memo.doc>.

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mutual counterrevolutionary activity. In October 1935 he handed this note to

Tukhachevsky, who accepted this proposal of Trotsky’s.

In January 1936 he informed Trotsky of the existence of a Trotskyist

military organization and its center consisting of Primakov, Putna and Dreitser,

about the connections of this organization and about recruitment.

At his interrogation of June 2 1937 Putna had already confessed that in

the spring of 1931 he had established espionage ties with the German G[eneral]

S[taff] and at various times gave the Germans, through their generals

Nedavmeister85

(?), Adam, and Bokkel’berg information about the military staff

of the Red army, its organizational structure and location of its forces, about

armaments and the system of military readiness. It is not apparent from these

interrogations precisely what information Putna transmitted.

Putna declared moreover that in 1936 at the time of his and

Tukhachevsky’s trip together to England Tukhachevsky compared the

relationship of forces and proved to him that the defeat of the USSR in a war

with Germany was inevitable. And that he, Putna, agreed with Tukhachevsky and

said to him that for the swiftest defeat of Soviet forces it was essential to act

together on the side of the Trotskyist organization. However Putna did not

confess how Tukhachevsky reacted to this.

Fel’dman also confessed that from Tukhachevsky’s words he was aware

that he had an agreement with Pyatakov concerning a disruption in the supply of

artillery, and also maintained a connection with Trotsky, from whom he was

receiving directives concerning counterrevolutionary activity. From his own

words Fel’dman learned that Egorov, commander of the VTSIK School was

preparing a “palace coup,” but Tukhachevsky said that Egorov was an indecisive

person and unsuitable for this purpose. In addition this School was being moved

out of the Kremlin and therefore a more realistic plan for the seizure of power –

as Tukhachevsky averred – was defeat of the Red army in the future war, and an

armed uprising.

But at this point Tukhachevsky declared that Putna and Primakov did not

trust him politically very much, that during their trips to Moscow Primakov gave

85 This is probably German General Oskar von Niedermayer, who worked for the Reichswehr (German military) in an intelligence capacity in Moscow in the early 1930s, having formally resigned from the military. He was a General again during World War II, was captured after the War by the Soviets, tried and sentenced to 25 years in prison, and died shortly thereafter in 1948.

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the military center information but avoided conversations with Tukhachevsky on

this topic. That Primakov and Putna had private ties through their Trotskyist

centers and were maintaining contact with Trotsky. Tukhachevsky declared that

he personally did not share Trotskyist views and further admitted that in 1936 he

had received a note from Sedov in which the latter in Trotsky’s name proposed to

proceed to join with the Trotskyist cadres in the Red army in order to prepare the

seizure of power.

At the beginning of the interrogation Tukhachevsky confessed that he

had not met in person with either Trotsky or Sedov after their exile from the

Soviet Union. But at the end of the interrogation he declared that in 1932, when

he was at the maneuvers in the German army, he had established a personal

connection with Trotsky and had reached an agreement about carrying on

Trotskyist work in the Red army.

On that same day, May 27 1937, Tukhachevsky signed the transcript of

an interrogation in which he admitted to his leading role in the military

conspiracy, but these confessions differ significantly from those he had given

earlier. In these confessions Tukhachevsky said nothing about personal ties with

Trotsky and affirmed that he maintained ties with Trotsky through Romm and

Primakov. That it was through them that he received Trotsky’s directive that it

was essential to go over to terrorist methods of work, about which Tukhachevsky

had not confessed earlier.

Iakir:

In 1933 Tukhachevsky, who knew about my waverings on questions of the

Party’s policy in the village, and about my ties to former Trotskyists, after first

feeling me out, informed me that he was connected with Trotsky, according to

whose directive he was organizing a military conspiracy and proposed that I take

part in it. I gave Tukhachevsky my agreement, after which he said to me that he

was at the head of the conspiracy, that there was a military center whose staff he

proposed that I join. I agreed to become part of the staff of the center. In this

conversation Tukhachevsky informed me that Uborevich, with whom he had

recently had a conversation on this subject, was also in the center of the military

conspiracy. Tukhachevsky spoke about a directive of Trotsky’s that he had

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recently received and in which the following tasks were placed before the center

of the military conspiracy:

1. The organization of a coup in Moscow, in the Ukraine, and in a number of

other places in the Soviet Union with the aim of seizing power.

2. In the event that the coup d’etat was unsuccessful, to organize the defeat of the

Red army in a war with the Polish-German bloc and to organize the theater of

military operations and the armies accordingly.

3. To organize sabotage in the RKKA in both material-technical and military

preparatoins.

4. Independently of Trotsky’s direct ties with the German General Staff and the

fascist government, it was important for the military center to organize these ties

independently.

Analysis of Rudenko’s Letter

Rudenko summarized details from some interrogations of Putna, Tukhachevsky

and Iakir that have not been made public. These passages tie Trotsky to collaboration

with Germany in several ways:

• Putna, the leading Trotskyist among the military men, claimed he had been in

touch with Trotsky; involved in a Trotskyist military organization, and

conspiring with the German General Staff.

• Tukhachevsky confirmed that Primakov and Putna were in touch with Trotsky,

as he himself was, and that he and the Trotskyist cadres were working

together.

• According to Iakir, Tukhachevsky had said that the military conspiracy was

being organized in coordination with Trotsky and “according to his directive.”

• Iakir confirmed that the military conspirators were to work for the defeat of

the Red Army in a war with Germany and Poland.

• Iakir said that Trotsky had direct ties with the German General Staff.

This material suggests that there is yet more evidence in the investigation

materials of the Tukhachevsky group of Trotsky’s contacts with Germany.

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Voroshilov’s Talk at the Commissariat of Defense

From the same source we have obtained a copy of the transcript (stenogramma) of

a talk by Commissar of Defense Voroshilov to the military personnel in the Commissariat

(= Ministry) of Defense on June 9, 1937.86 Voroshilov read out quotations from

interrogations and court documents of the Tukhachevsky Affair.

Some of those quotations are not given in the transcript, or are given only

partially. We will use what we have, and will only cite those quotations that deal directly

with Trotsky and his alleged ties to either Germany or Japan or that confirm the

information in Rudenko’s report.

TRANSCRIPT

OF THE ACTIV OF THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT OF DEFENSE USSR

June 9 1937

BOTH PUTNA and all the rest of them tell about how they linked their work

with the principal scoundrel and main gunman of counterrevolution in our

country who was driven out of this country – Trotsky.

Here is what PUTNA says:

“ – When I found out (he was saying this to the investigator) that I was being

recalled to Moscow in the last days of September 1935 I reported about this to

Sedov. (Reads PUTNA’s confessions)

They [the investigators – GF] asked him this question: “Was Trotsky’s letter

handed to Tukhachevsky, when and under what circumstances.”

Answer: “Trotsky’s letter was handed to Tukhachevsky. (reads).

What Tukhachevsky says about this. They asked him this question: “when did

you establish contact with Trotsky and what directives did you receive from

him.”

Answer: “I established contact with Trotsky through Romm in 1932. The latter

brought him a note in 1935 too. Obviously this was not the first note.

“In 1932 . . . (reads). Further he relates what Romm said to him. “Everything that

he reported I approved, then I met with him in 1933 and 1934. When in fact the

antisoviet work in the army had already been developed by me there took place

my second meeting with Romm in Moscow . . .” (reads).

86 We cited a short passage from this document above in connection with the question of General Milch.

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That’s what Tukhachevsky says about his contacts with Trotsky and about those

tasks which the latter set before him.

Here are you see it’s not just a question of Trotsky’s assigning tasks on his own

account, but Trotsky at the same time has instructions also from the German

General Staff. I have information that it is not only the German General Staff

that has influence on Trotsky, but that the latter was connected to the Japanese

General Staff as well, or in any case with its intelligence organs.

Primakov answers the question what tasks were set before him and what he did:

“Trotsky’s basic directives . . . were known to me too from the words of Dreitser

and Putna, they came down to this, that Trotsky was demanding to reestablish a

military organization, to strengthen it in the army as well, making use of the

sharpening of the class struggle . . . up to 1933.”

. . .

Putna about his spying: “A few days later” (reads) . . . Then while conversations

went on: “about the desirability of changing the system, the leadership in the

USSR . . .” (reads).

That means that preparatory conversations were going on, and then further:

“Shleikher expressed his unequivocal readiness . . .” (reads). He brought this to

Trotsky’s attention through this gentleman Sedov and Sedov reports that Trotsky

proposes: (reads). (Emphasis added) (Voenniy Sovet 372-373; 384)

The testimony here generally accords with what we have seen previously, no

doubt because Voroshilov drew his information from the same interrogations. The

“Shleikher” named here is no doubt General Kurt von Schleicher, Chancellor of Germany

from June 1932 to January 1933 and previously Minister of Defense.

Colonel L.A. Shnitman

Further evidence about contacts between the military conspirators and Trotsky

keeps coming to light. In a 2009 book we read the following:

In September 1937 Ezhov sent Stalin a special communication containing an

assessment of the activities of Colonel L.A. Shnitman, military attaché to

Czechoslovakia. There was compromising material stating that he was aide to

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Komandarm 2nd rank A.I. Kork, military attaché to Germany. In January 1937 a

group of Soviet pilots who had served in Spain had been detained in France, and

Shnitman was also blamed for this. During his interrogation he had also told the

investigators about his “meetings” upon Tukhachevsky’s instructions in Paris

with Sedov, Trotsky’s son, concerning the transmission of secret information to

foreign intelligence services. (Khaustov-Samuel’son 226)

Evaluating This Evidence

As with a great many other statements in this book the authors give no citation,

not even an archival source, for this information. What are we to make of this?

Both authors are extremely anticommunist and very hostile to Stalin. They reject

out of hand any possibility that any of the Opposition conspiracies actually existed. Their

book contains many falsifications, significant omissions, and outright lies, all in an

anticommunist direction. There’s no reason to think they would ever fabricate a story of a

connection between Shnitman and Sedov, or between Sedov and Tukhachevsky.

Moreover, Khaustov is associated with the “Memorial” organization. He is one of a few

privileged researchers who has access to many archival documents.

We may conclude, therefore, that an interrogation of Shnitman’s does exist in

which he confesses to contacting Sedov on Tukhachevsky’s behalf and discussing with

him passing Soviet secrets to foreign countries. Another “Memorial” society source

reports that Shnitman was convicted of “espionage [and] participation in a military

conspiracy in the Red Army.”87 This is what we would expect if Shnitman did confess as

Khaustov and Samuel’son affirm. Yet another source confirms that Shnitman was aide to

the military attaché to Germany in 1926-1929 and again in 1934-35, was military attaché

to Finland in 1929-30 and military attaché to Czechoslovakia 1936-1938.88

The date of Ezhov’s memorandum to Stalin as given by Khaustov and

Samuel’son, September 1937, is curious. There’s good evidence from other sources that

Shnitman was arrested on January 14, 1938 and that his trial and execution took place on

87 “Kommunarka. 1938. Avgust.” At <http://www.memo.ru/memory/communarka/Chapt10.htm>; “Spiski zhertv” <http://lists.memo.ru/d37/f245.htm#n43>. These are both “Memorial Society” sources. 88 <http://baza.vgd.ru/1/38052/>.

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August 28, 1938.89 One would expect that an interrogation in which Shnitman made such

self-incriminating disclosures must have taken place between these two dates rather than

prior to Ezhov’s September 1937 communication to Stalin. Surely no one who had

confessed to such crimes would have been left at large for another four months. That

deduction in turn implies that Khaustov and Samuel’son saw not just Ezhov’s note to

Stalin but at least part of Shnitman’s investigative file.

The “foreign intelligence service” Sedov and, through Shnitman, Tukhachevsky

were spying for is not named. But it must have been Germany. Tukhachevsky had ties

with the German General Staff about which he confessed at length, as we have seen,

while Shnitman had had some connection to Germany but not to any other of the great

European powers.

In a book of more than 400 pages the authors devote only this single paragraph to

Shnitman’s case. Indeed, there is no particular reason they should have inserted this

paragraph at all. The implication is that there may be more – perhaps much more –

evidence of contact between Trotsky or Sedov and Germany or Japan, to say nothing of

Trotsky’s contacts with Soviet oppositionists.

Other Evidence From The Soviet Archives of Trotsky’s Collaboration

To this point we’ve confined our attention to documents from the former Soviet

archives containing evidence of “first-hand” contact between Trotsky and Germany or

Japan. The persons whose accounts we have examined claim that they knew of Trotsky’s

contact with Germany or Japan either from Trotsky himself or from German or Japanese

diplomats.

Although the dividing line between first- and second-hand evidence is a clear one,

the evidentiary value of second-hand evidence is not necessarily less. For example we

now have Nikolai Bukharin’s first confession of June 2, 1937, a document still top-secret

in Russia today but that turned up in an archive that was sent West sometime in the mid-

1990s. We have examined this confession in detail in another study to which we refer the

interested reader.

89 O.F. Suvenirov. Tragediia RKKA 1937-1938. Institut Voennoi Istorii Ministerstva Oborony Rossiiskoi Federatsii. Moscow: “Terra,” 1998, p. 441, No. 262.

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It is significant because Bukharin confirms what we have already learned from

Radek’s testimony, since Bukharin’s knowledge of Trotsky’s collaboration with

Germany came only through Radek. Radek had implicated Bukharin in pretrial

statements and then again at the public January 1937 Moscow trial. Bukharin had denied

what Radek said over and over again, but on June 2 1937 he reversed himself and

confessed.

Why did Bukharin decide to confess? It appears that one reason may have been

that Bukharin had learned of Tukhachevsky’s arrest, and figured “the jig was up.”90 In his

final statement at the March 1938 Moscow Trial Bukharin said that “of course, the

evidence” played a determining role. That must mean evidence recently obtained and

shown to him, which would no doubt include the evidence of the military conspirators.

If Bukharin’s testimony contradicted Radek’s we would be forced to conclude that on the

evidence one or both were wrong. Since Bukharin’s statement confirms Radek’s, their

statements mutually corroborate, or strengthen each other.

Yagoda’s Confessions 1937

There exists a good deal more such “second-hand evidence” of Trotsky’s

collaboration with the Germans and Japanese in recently published Soviet archival

documents.

Genrikh S. Yagoda was Commissar of the NKVD (= Minister of Internal Affairs),

which included the political police, from 1934 till he was dismissed in September 1936.

He was arrested in early March, 1937. Subsequently he was one of the leading defendants

in the third Moscow trial of March 1938.

In 1997 a number of materials from Genrikh Yagoda’s investigative file were

published in a very small edition of 200 copies in the provincial city of Kazan’ by some

researchers employed by the FSB, successor to the KGB. Since that time some of the

documents published in this collection have been published elsewhere, evidently from

copies held in different archives. In these interrogation transcripts Yagoda makes startling

90 See Grover Furr and Vladimir Bobrov, “Nikolai Bukharin’s ’s First Statement of Confession in the Lubianka.” Cultural Logic 2007, 17 and nn. 32 and 33. Bibliographic information of the Russian original of this article is given there.

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confessions. These confessions include details of his collaboration with German

intelligence.

Avel’ Enukidze was a high-ranking Party official and member of the Soviet

government who had been arrested earlier. Only two interrogations of Enukidze’s have

been published: one in a collection of Yagoda materials in 1997, another in the second of

the “Lubianka-Stalin” volumes in 2004. In neither does Enukidze speak much about

Trotsky. In the volume of materials devoted to Yagoda, however, we find the following

remark about Enukidze, Trotsky and the Germans. We have italicized passages of special

interest to our investigation.

In the first place, in 1935 the prospects of a war by a strengthened Germany

against the Soviet Union were growing with each day. In that connection it was

necessary to move ahead swiftly and make an agreement with them.

Enukidze told me that Trotsky abroad had established full contact with German

governmental circles, and that Enukidze himself also had a line of contact with

the Germans. (Genrikh Yagoda 193)

According to Yagoda, Enukidze both knew of Trotsky’s “full-scale contact” with

“German governmental circles,” and told him that he, Enukidze, had his own such

contacts.

Yagoda also testified about Lev Karakhan’s ties to Trotsky and the Germans.

But I am aware that in the orientation to and conspiracies with German

governmental circles both the Trotskyists and Zinovievists, on the one side, and

the Rights, on the other side, had their own separate lines [of contact].

Question: How did they differ and where do you know this from?

Answer: Karakhan spoke to me about this in one of our talks with him in 1935.

The essence of these two lines in orientation to and contact with the Germans

consists in the following: the Trotskyist-Zinovievist part of our center was

carrying out negotiations with German governmental circles through Trotsky,

who was in emigration, isolated from the Soviet Union, ignorant of the internal

processes of the country and ready to give away everything just in order to

overthrow Soviet power and return to Russia as soon as possible.

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We, the Rights, had a different attitude. We were not supporters of a new

partition of Russia, as Trotsky was doing. . . .

Karakhan’s connection with the Germans had existed for a long time. And the

center of the Rights used this line of contact, already established, as a real line,

and offered to Karakhan to enter into official negotiations with the German

governmental circles. I have already confessed that Karakhan was in Berlin after

this and met there with Nadolny and Hess (or Goebbels) and, as he said to me,

had already in 1936 achieved significant concessions from the Germans.

Question: What concessions?

Answer: Concessions of the servile conditions on the basis of which the

agreement with Trotsky had been achieved. (Genrikh Yagoda 194-195)

Karakhan apparently claimed to have had his own ties to the Germans through Nadolny

(presumably Rudolf Nadolny, German diplomat) and either Hess or Goebbels. Others of

the Rights testified at the March 1938 Trial that Karakhan and Yagoda were very critical

of Trotsky’s dealings with the Germans, believing that Trotsky was cut off from the

realities of life in the USSR and was yielding far too much to the Germans just in hopes

of returning to power.

Assessing the Evidence: Yagoda’s Confessions

Scholars with “impeccable” anticommunist credentials have cited these

documents unproblematically. For example, Marc Jansen and Nikita Petrov cite this work

as a primary source, without claiming that the interrogations in it were, or even might

have been, faked, obtained by compulsion, etc.91 One of the documents has also been

published in a semiofficial collection of documents from the Soviet archives, a fact that

further attests to their genuine nature.92 We may therefore conclude that the documents

really do come from the Yagoda investigative file and are generally conceded to be

genuine.

91 E.g. Jansen & Petrov 220 n.23, 224 n. 110, 226 n. 9, 228 n.40. Petrov is a senior researcher with the highly anticommunist organization “Memorial”; Jansen is a major anticommunist researcher of the Soviet 1930s. 92 The documents published as Nos. 40 and 41 in Genrikh Yagoda 108-136 were also published as document No. 59, pp. 135-145 in the official collection Lubianka. Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie

gosbezopasnosti NKVD 1937-1938 (Moscow: “Materik,” 2004).

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These documents merit a detailed analysis in and of themselves. Their contents

intersect with many other materials now available such as confession statements by other

individuals arrested in connection with the investigations concerning espionage and

conspiracy, and the transcript of the Third Moscow trial.

At the end of each of Yagoda’s confessions printed in this 1997 volume is a

disclaimer, variously worded. At the end of interrogation two, Yagoda’s first confession,

which took place on April 26, 1937 (pp. 109-137) we read:

Information about the conspirator-employees of the NKVD is falsified. Other

aforementioned statement by Yagoda are not credible.

For more information about the repression of Chekists in the middle

1930s see Palchinsky A.A. “Represii v organakh NKVD v seredine 30-kh

godov,” in Political persecution in Russia: Historical and contemporary.

St.Petersburg: 1997, pp. 284-294.

At the end of the second confession, of May 4, 1937 (pp. 137-143):

Information about the conspirator-employees of the NKVD is falsified.

At the end of the third (May 13, 1937, pp. 144-167):

All information in the transcript concerning acts of terror and conspiracies are

falsified.

V.M. Primakov and the other military men were fully rehabilitated in

1937. Izvestiia TsK KPSS No. 4 (1989), 42-73. A.I. Rykov, N.I. Bukharin and

others were rehabilitated in 1988. Izvestiia TsK KPSS No. 5 (1989), 69-92.

B.I. Nikolaevsky (1887-1966), in 1903-1906 a Bolshevik, then a

Menshevik, political émigré. Nikolaevsky refuted the reports that he received any

packets from Rykov. Sotsialisticheskii Vestnik No. 5 (1938), 12. For more detail

on P.P. Ol’berg and Shemelev see V.Z. Rogovin, 1937. Moscow, 1966.

At the end of the fourth (May 19, 1937, pp. 167-184):

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All information about conspiracies and acts of terror is falsified. The case of the

murder of S.M. Kirov remains open to this day. A.E. Enukidze and the other

persons named in the transcript were rehabilitated in the 1960s-1980s.

The fifth (May 26, 1937, pp. 185-199):

All information in the transcript concerning conspiracy and accusations of

“espionage” is falsified. L.M. Karakhan and the other persons named in the

transcript have been rehabilitated.

At the end of a two-page statement by Yagoda to Ezhov concerning NKVD worker

Mironov (June 4, 1937, pp. 200-202):

The information in the document is not credible.

At the end of the interrogation of December 28, 1937 (pp. 202-218):

The information is not credible. Professor L.G. Levin and other doctors were

later rehabilitated because there is no evidence of any crime in their activities.

The end of the “face-to-face confrontation” (ochnaia stavka) between Yagoda and Dr.

Levin of January 4, 1938, pp. 218-223:

The information cited in the transcript is not credible.

The end of the confrontation between Yagoda and Dr. Kriuchkov of January 5, 1938, pp.

223-227:

The answers are not credible. P.P. Kriuchkov was later rehabilitated because

there is no evidence of any crime in his activities.

The end of the confrontation between Yagoda and Professor D.D. Pletnev of January 5,

1938, pp. 227-230:

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The answers are not credible. Professor D.D. Pletnev was was later rehabilitated

because there is no evidence of any crime in his activities.

The end of the confrontation between Dr. Levin, also of January 5, 1938, pp. 231-233:

The “confessions” of L.G. Levin and P.P. Kriuchkov were later refuted as not

credible.

At the end of the interrogation of Yagoda held on January 10, 1938, pp. 235-239:

Yagoda’s answers are not credible.

There are similar remarks at the end of the interrogation – confession of Artuzov, of June

15, 1937 (pp. 487-499). We will consider Artuzov’s confession below.

The information given by Artuzov is not credible. Later it was all refuted in his

rehabilitation.

The same kind of comments are made at the end of other interrogation –

confessions which we do not consider here, such as those of Avel’ Enukidze and of

NKVD men Bulanov, Prokof’ev, Radzivilovskii, and Trilisser.

Assessing These Documents: “Rehabilitations”

The comments cited above are of course not a critical analysis, or any kind of

analysis, of the confessions of Yagoda’s that the volume reproduces. In fact, the book has

no analysis of the assertions made in the interrogation – confessions at all.

Some of the comments allude to “rehabilitations.” Most such “rehabilitations”

have not been made public, so we can’t evaluate them. However, we know a good deal

about a number of “rehabilitations” of well-known figures – enough to know that they are

political, not historically accurate, documents.

Specifically, we have a good deal of the material on Bukharin’s “rehabilitation.”

We know that it does not prove him innocent in the slightest. On the contrary, in their

decree “rehabilitating” Bukharin the Plenum of the Soviet Supreme Court falsified a key

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document – Frinovsky’s confession of April 11, 1939, which was not public in February,

1988 when Bukharin’s case came before it, but has been published since. Far from

proving Bukharin innocent, Frinovsky’s confession in fact shows him to have been

guilty. Our essay on this subject is in press at a Russian publisher.

We also have a good deal of information about the “rehabilitation” of Professor

D.D. Pletnev. Pletnev features in Yagoda’s file and in some of the documents printed

here. Unlike the case of Bukharin, most of Pletnev’s file still remains secret. But we have

enough to know that it did not prove him “innocent” at all.93 Earlier in the present essay

we pointed out that the “rehabilitation” document of Zinoviev and his codefendants

contains evidence of Zinoviev’s guilt rather than his innocence.

So “rehabilitations” are not proof that the individuals “rehabilitated” were

innocent, even though they are presented as though they were. Rather, they are official

claims that the individuals “rehabilitated” will be considered to be innocent, and in future

will be declared to have been “victims” of “Stalin’s crimes.” “Rehabilitations” are

political acts, not exercises in the reconsideration of evidence. Marc Junge, a German

researcher on the repressions of the 1930s and a determined proponent of the “anti-

Stalin” paradigm put it this way:

In agreement with von Goudoever it may be definitively established that

rehabilitation in the Soviet Union remained an act of political-administrative

caprice that was determined above all by political usefulness, not by juridical

correctness.94

It appears that the “disclaimers” quoted above and attached to the end of every

confession-statement in this volume are the same kind of thing. They indirectly inform

the reader something like this: “We, the editors of this volume, do not claim that the

93 For a detailed study of Bukharin’s and Pletnev’s “rehabilitations” proving them to be falsified and, in fact, proving both Bukharin and Pletnev guilty see Grover Furr and Vladimir Bobrov, Bukharin na plakhe (“Bukharin on the block”), forthcoming. 94 “In Übereinstimmung zu von Goudoever kann abschließend festgestellt wurden, daß Rehabilitierung in der Sowjetunion ein politisch-administrativer Willkürakt blieb, der vor allem von der politischen Zweckmäßigkeit der Maßnahmen bestimmt wurde, nicht aber von der strafrechtlichen Korrektheit.” Bucharins Rehabilitierung. Historisches Gedächtnis in der Sowjetunion 1953-1991. Berlin: BasisDruck Vlg, 1999, 266. This is discussed in more detail in Furr and Bobrov 5 ff.

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contents of these confession-statements are true. We assert that they are ‘not trustworthy’

or ‘falsified’ but we cannot prove it and, in fact, have no evidence to that effect. If you

want evidence, refer to the ‘rehabilitations’ of the individuals in question – which, in fact,

you cannot gain access to.”

The editors of the Yagoda volume are employees of the FSB, the successor to the

KGB – that is, the Russian intelligence and security service. Not to state that these

confessions are “false” or at least “not trustworthy” would be for them to take a position

contradictory to what some important Russian (and Soviet) state institutions have taken in

the past. It’s not the job of the state security service to call some other state institution a

liar. Whatever else it may mean this formula allows them to avoid doing so.

We can deduce something more from these brief phrases. We may assume that if

there were any other kind of evidence that the statements made in the confessions and

interrogations were false, that evidence would be cited. Since no such evidence is cited,

in effect these notes constitute a kind of admission that the contents of the confessions

cannot be shown to be false.

One could object that here too “lack of evidence is not evidence of the lack” of

contradictory evidence. In reality, however, we know from the published volumes of

Rehabilitation documents that during Gorbachev’s time very thorough searches of the

archives were carried out with a view to finding evidence that the condemned Opposition

defendants of the 1930s were falsely convicted. In the case of Yagoda, the Moscow Trials

defendants, and the “Tukhachevsky Affair” no such evidence was found.

As we have noted, even some Cold-War scholars who reject the validity of the

Moscow Trials on principle accept these Yagoda documents at face value and have cited

them as genuine without negative comment on the veracity of their contents. Arch Getty

has criticized them for using such sources, claiming that, for instance, “everybody

knows” that Ezhov’s confessions were coerced and falsified by his interrogators

(Kritika). That is simply not true. Neither Getty nor anybody else “knows” this. Evidence

is not to be “believed” or “disbelieved” – much less rejected or disregarded – but

considered in the context of all the other evidence. To say that Yagoda’s confession may

be false is also to say that they may not be false. That is, absent any information that they

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were false, there is no more basis for “disbelieving” than for “believing” them. In fact,

not even the anticommunist scholars have rejected them as invalid.

If Yagoda’s confessions were the only evidence we had of oppositionists

conspiring with Germany or Japan, we would still have no grounds to discard them. On

the contrary: testimony that such an illegal contact existed is, while certainly not

conclusive, far more compelling than any claims to the contrary. This is a principle of

investigation so self-evident it is seldom discussed. In the case of a person accused of a

crime, one may expect denial in any case: by an innocent person, because he is innocent;

while by a guilty person because he wishes to escape the consequences of his crime.

Therefore confessions of guilt are of greater interest than professions of innocence.

But Yagoda’s confessions are far from the only evidence we have that the

opposition was conspiring with Germany and/or Japan. In fact they constitute just one

group of a large body of evidence that suggests such conspiracy. As with any confession

of guilt, the existence of this testimony is prima facie evidence that the confessions are

true. They are confirmed by Yagoda’s appeal for clemency published in 1992, which

reads as follows:

My guilt before my country is great. It is impossible to redeem it to any extent. It

is hard to die. Before the whole people and Party I stand on my knees and beg

you to have mercy on me and let me live.95

Every one of the ten persons whose confessions were reproduced along with

Yagoda’s insisted upon his guilt in his appeal. Bukharin wrote that his guilt was so great

he “should be shot ten times over.” As we have already noted Dr. Natan Lur’e repeated

his guilt:

I really did prepare the assassination of Voroshilov upon instruction from Franz

Weitz, a Gestapo representative. I wished to accomplish these disgusting murders

because I had been poisoned by the poison of Trotskyism during my long stay in

Germany.

95 “Rasskaz o desiati rasstreliannykh”.

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No single piece of evidence is univocal, pointing towards a single conclusion

only. One might perhaps imagine an example of an innocent person who nevertheless

was persuaded to confess again and again in pretrial interrogations; to do so again at trial;

to protest his innocence of certain capital crimes in vehement terms while at the same

time confirming his guilt of other capital crimes; and then confessing his guilt again in

his appeal. But we have to draw our historical conclusions not on imagination but

evidence. There is no evidence to refute Yagoda’s confessions, while they confirm and

are consistent with a great deal of evidence we do have.

Conclusion

Based on the nature and amount of the evidence we have we must conclude that

Leon Trotsky did indeed collaborate with the Germans and Japanese.

The evidence we have cited cannot be accounted for by any processes of

fabrication:

• There is far too much of it.

• Much of it was never intended to be made public.

• It comes from different sources.

• It is all mutually corroborative. Evidence about Trotsky’s German/Japanese

collaboration is part of a complex of evidence about other conspiracies by

other persons. Those conspiracies are well supported by evidence too. This

corroborates the part of that evidence that inculpates Trotsky.

• Some of the evidence -- that of the Tukhachevsky Affair interrogation

testimony and trial confessions, and Iakovlev’s confession.-- is so strong that

it would be sufficient to establish the fact of Trotsky’s collaboration in and of

itself, even if we did not have any additional archival or trial evidence.

• There is no evidence counteracting it.

During Khrushchev’s time; during Gorbachev’s tenure as head of the CPSU and

then of the USSR; during Eltsin’s time; and in fact until today, an enormous amount of

effort has been devoted by the Soviet government and Party leaders and subsequently by

the Russian government to find evidence in the archives that proves the Moscow Trials

and Tukhachevsky Affair defendants were framed. All such searches have been fruitless.

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In principle all claims to historical truth always remain subject to revision in the light of

future evidence. But in this case it seems there is nowhere for future contradictory

evidence to come from. Even though they are still top-secret and only a tiny number of

researchers can see them, still we know that the Soviet archives have been thoroughly

searched. It seems safe to surmise that no such evidence will be discovered in future. In

fact just the opposite is the case: we can be confident that much in the archives is still

classified because it would confirm the guilt of the defendants of the 1930s and

disconfirm the “anti-Stalin” paradigm. This would be the “cannon shot,” in Col.

Alksnis’s words, that would destroy the anticommunist – and, of course, the Trotskyist --

historiography of the Stalin era.

Objectivity and Denial

There is only one conclusion consistent with an objective assessment of the

evidence we now have. We have drawn this conclusion here out of no animosity towards

Trotsky or partisanship for Stalin. Like other people, scholars have preconceived ideas

and prejudices. In the search for historical truth as in science, scholars are obliged to form

an hypothesis and put it to the test – which means being ready to find evidence

contradictory to their hypothesis. In this case the evidence confirms our hypothesis that

Trotsky did collaborate with Germany and Japan.

We are confident that some people will reject this conclusion. Few subjects

during the past century have so engaged the passions of so many men and women as has

the communist movement. Within that movement surely one of the most contentious

issues has and continues to be the “Stalin vs Trotsky” debate. There are few “Stalinists”

around today – though that situation may be changing somewhat, especially within

Russia. There are many more supporters of Trotsky. Trotskyists are passionately devoted

to a heroic version of Trotsky’s life and legacy. Anticommunists and Trotskyists are both

loyal to a paradigm of Soviet history and especially of the 1930s that is utterly

incompatible with the conclusions we have drawn in this essay.

We predict that regardless of the evidence neither staunch anticommunists nor

Trotskyists will ever accept that Trotsky did in fact collaborate with Germany and Japan.

The “Cold War” paradigm of Soviet history during Stalin’s time depends upon the

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construction of Stalin as an evil man who was killing innocent people and destroying the

communist movement. If Trotsky and, by implication, the oppositionists who worked

with him were guilty of what they were charged with and to which most, though of

course not Trotsky, confessed, then this “Cold War” paradigm of Soviet history is

dismantled.

Trotsky’s and Sedov’s denials cannot be taken seriously. Someone who had

access to the closed Trotsky archives at Harvard purged them. No one could expect

Trotsky or Sedov, or anyone who had that archival access, to be objective about Trotsky,

so we can be certain that they were not.

But no one lies if the truth is on their side. It is true generally that denials of guilt

are of little interest to any investigator. The guilty as well as the innocent can be expected

to proclaim their innocence. And if confessions of guilt should not be automatically

assumed to be truthful, the same is true of professions of innocence.

It is certain that some readers of this essay will “deny” the results of this analysis

by raising one or more of the objections we will now consider.

Torture

The issue of torture is cited very often as, supposedly, an “explanation” for the

confessions by all the persons whose testimony we have cited here. In fact this is a very

weak explanation.

Is it possible that all the accounts by all the witnesses we have cited could have

been obtained by torturing, or otherwise forcing, the witnesses to make these statements,

and then carefully co-ordinating or “scripting” them? Is it possible that all the defendants

memorized “scripted” confessions to make during the investigation, when the materials

were all secret; then again at the public trial; and then again in the texts of their secret

appeals for clemency to the Soviet Supreme Court – and all out of fear of “torture”?

The question of torture is an important one as it goes to the heart of our study and

of historical methodology generally – namely, the question of evidence. First: it is not

easy to determine whether or not a given individual was, in fact, tortured.

• It should be obvious that the mere fact that a defendant claims he was tortured

does not mean that he was in fact tortured. Of course the general principle is

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that no one should simply be assumed to be telling the truth, or assumed to be

lying, without substantiating evidence. Falsely claiming one was tortured

could be a way of explaining shameful behavior – naming others in one’s

confession, for example – while preserving some self-respect or dignity.

During and after the Khrushchev period it became well known that defendants

could often get their convictions vacated and rights restored by claiming they

had been tortured.

• We can’t conclude that an arrestee was tortured simply because an NKVD

investigator later said that he was. This is true a fortiori if the NKVD man (or

someone else) claims to know it at second hand, from someone else, rather

than confessing to torturing the prisoner himself.

• We have to be skeptical of what NKVD men or other investigators wrote or

testified during the Khrushchev years. During this time NKVD men were not

simply threatened with serious penalties, including death, but some were

actually executed on the grounds that they had beaten prisoners during the

1930s up to 1940-41, despite the fact that Khrushchev himself admitted this

had been permitted by a Central Commitee decision.

• Even less can we accept the “fruit of the poisoned tree” argument: “A was,

apparently, tortured, and he named B and C, so ALL were, in fact, innocent.”

The “fruit of the poisoned tree” logic is a judicial – legal – principle. It means

that evidence obtained in an unlawful manner should not be used in court even

when that evidence discloses a crime. It does not speak to the question of guilt

or innocence, and guilt (or innocence) is what we are interested in.

• We can’t conclude that an arrestee was innocent of the crimes he was charged

with, or to which he confessed, on the sole grounds that he, or someone else,

claims he was tortured. First, those claims may be false. Second, the fact that

someone has been tortured does not mean that they were innocent. Guilty

persons can also be tortured.

• Repeated written complaints of torture, coupled with a retraction of

confessions during the investigation, at trial, or both, make it likely that the

prisoner’s claims are true. If and when they are also accompanied by

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confessions by the torturer(s) and/or their superiors, the claims become even

more credible. But we have none of these things concerning the defendants at

the Moscow Trials or the Tukhachevsky Affair.

Furthermore, even if we could be reasonably assured that a defendant was

tortured, that does not mean that the defendant was innocent of all crimes he was charged

with. A number of defendants who claimed they were tortured made differentiated

confessions, withdrawing part of their confessions on the grounds that they were false,

made under duress, but not withdrawing other parts. This is strong evidence that the part

of the confession not withdrawn is truthful – for otherwise, why not withdraw or deny it

all?

The fact that a confession could not be used in evidence against a defendant

unless it had been confirmed at trial, and that many defendants did in fact retract their

confessions at trial, means that we should be hesitant to discount confessions by persons

who did not retract their confessions at trial when they could have done so.

We can be confident – at least, until good evidence to the contrary should be

discovered – that the torture of many defendants, though not of those whose statements

we examine in this article, did take place because the evidence for it comes from a

number of different sources. The chances that all that evidence could have been

“orchestrated” – fabricated into a coherent pattern – become negligable.

For the same reason we can be confident that Trotsky did conspire with the

Germans and Japanese. There is so much evidence of it, from so many different sources,

and it is so consistent with other information we have, that the chances it has all been

fabricated is vanishingly small.

The Charge of “Torture” As A Smokescreen

Could torture have been going on “behind the scenes” so that we have no

knowledge of it? Or, should we simply assume that a defendant was tortured if he

confessed to serious crimes, even if we have no evidence that he was?

To this objection the response has to be: No. We must always demand evidence.

Without evidence that some event occurred it is illegitimate to conclude that it did. It is

not scientific to assume that something is going on unseen and leaving no trace. If in fact

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there is no material evidence that a given witness was lying, while evidence that

corroborates some of his statements does exist, we must conclude that he was not lying.

Likewise, absent evidence that a person was tortured it is illegitimate to assume that he

was.

We have no evidence that any of the defendants in the three Moscow Trials were

tortured. In the best-documented case we know as certainly as we ever can that Bukharin

was NOT tortured.96 Steven Cohen, author of the most famous and influential book about

Bukharin, has concluded that Bukharin could not have been tortured.97 Cohen is still

convinced Bukharin was innocent, but has no way of explaining why he confessed.

It should be obvious that guilty persons can be tortured too. “Means of physical

pressure,” the usual general term (and euphemism) in the USSR at this time, could be

applied to defendants to induce them to confess to what they actually had done, as well as

to make false confessions of crimes they had never committed. Therefore, even if it can

be proven somehow that a person actually has been tortured that does not mean he did not

commit the acts he is charged with. It only means that his confession should not be used

against him at trial. Therefore the issue of torture is separate from the issue of guilt or

innocence.

In a court procedure evidence that a defendant has made statements because of

mistreatment or threats is sufficient to have the statements thrown out. This practice is

necesary to protect the rights of the defendant. It’s also necessary to guarantee that the

investigators actually try to solve crimes instead of simply mistreating suspects until one

of them confesses. Historians are faced with a different situation. The question of guilt or

innocence is not at all the same as that of whether a defendant received a fair trial.98

A guilty person may confess guilt whether tortured or not. A guilty person may

claim innocence even if tortured, or if not tortured. Likewise, an innocent person may

confess guilt if tortured, but innocent persons have been known to falsely confess guilt

96 Furr and Bobrov, CL p. 10 and note. 97 Cohen (Koen), “Bukharin na Lubianke.” Svobodnaia Mysl’ 21 (3) 2003, p. 61. 98 Everyone agrees that the Haymarket defendants in Chicago in 1886 did not receive a fair trial, but there is debate about whether one of them, August Spies, may have fabricated the bomb or another, Louis Lingg, may have thrown it. Likewise everyone agrees that Sacco and Vanzetti did not receive a fair trial in Massachusetts in 1921, but there is some disagreement as to whether Sacco may in fact have committed the murder for which they were executed.

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without any compulsion at all. And an innocent person may persist in proclaiming her

innocence under torture or absent any mistreatment.

Among the military figures Putna and Fel’dman may have been beaten. We do not

even know that for certain. It is stated in the Shvernik Report and in the “rehabilitation”

document of 1989 that draws upon it. But many of these “rehabilitation” documents are

falsified. As always, there is no certain evidence.

But even if they were beaten, that has no bearing at all upon whether they were

guilty or innocent. The Shvernik Report contains much evidence of their guilt. So,

whether they were tortured or not, we have a lot of evidence that they were guilty. And it

is guilt or innocence – what happened – rather than whether proper judicial procedure

was used, that concerns us here.

The idea that not only the military men in the Tukhachevsky Affair but all the

defendants in all the Moscow Trials could have been made to confess to false charges by

torture or the threat of it, despite the lack of evidence of either torture or threat, is as

absurd as any statement we are likely to face. But that fact is never going to stop those

who need to believe these men were innocent from believing it.

We have no evidence that any of the other defendants in the Tukhachevsky Affair

were beaten or otherwise tortured. As we have seen above in our examination of the

Budienny letter we have excellent evidence that these men confessed at their private trial.

We know that Khrushchev-era and Gorbachev-era “rehabilitation” commissions lied and

dissembled in a vain attempt to prove the innocence of these and many other defendants,

and have discussed a number of examples of this in detail in an examination of

Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” of 1956.

The charge of “torture” serves the purpose of deflecting attention away from the

evidence that we do have. As invoked in the historiography of the Moscow Trials and

Tukhachevsky Affair it is a smokescreen, a rhetorical, propaganda device to stop us from

looking squarely at the large body of evidence we have. It is an attempt to make us

disregard that evidence.

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Lack of German Or Japanese Evidence

The objection will be heard: “If there had really been such a conspiracy then some

documentation of it would have been found in captured German or Japanese archives.”

The principle “lack of evidence is not evidence of a lack” applies here. The lack of

evidence in German or Japanese archives does not destroy the other evidence we do have,

and which we have analyzed above. It does not mean that no conspiracy existed.

And it is not quite true either. We do have evidence from both Czech and German

archives that during the period roughly from the end of 1936 through the first quarter of

1937 Hitler and the German government were awaiting a military coup against the Stalin

regime. Thanks to a slip of the tongue by a Japanese military commander in a talk with

Japanese journalists in early 1937 we know that Opposition figures within the USSR

were sending the Japanese military information – that, is, committing espionage.99

Genrikh Liushkov privately told the Japanese that real conspiracies existed among Soviet

military leaders, even naming some of those against whom other evidence exists. We also

have a great deal of other evidence concerning the defendants in the Moscow Trials and

the Tukhachevsky Affair that points to the guilt of the defendants. This too is consistent

with the results of our present investigation.

Lack of Documentary Proof

As we discussed earlier, Getty discovered that the Trotsky Archive at Harvard has

been imperfectly purged of evidence that Trotsky was in contact with his followers in the

USSR. Meanwhile Trotsky and Sedov lied in denying such contact. Suppose the purging

had been more competent and that all trace of this contact had been successfully

removed. Would that mean that no such contact had taken place? Of course it would not.

By the same principle “lack of evidence” – in this case, of Trotsky’s clandestine contacts

with his Soviet followers – would not be “evidence of a lack” of such contact. And, as

this essay has demonstrated, there is no lack of such evidence.

Thanks to Getty we know that there used to be some kind of incriminating

documentation of Trotsky’s activities in his own archive. Was there other such

99 This documentation has long since been published. To examine it is far beyond the scope of the present essay. The present author discusses these documents in a forthcoming book on the Soviet Opposition and their collaboration with Germany and Japan.

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documentation aside from that we know to have existed – letters to his major supporters

inside the USSR? We don’t know. We can’t legitimately conclude that there wasn’t.

It is an error in logic and method to fetishize documentary evidence. Any kind of

evidence – including documentary evidence – can be faked. In fact it would arguably

have been easier to forge documents inculpating Trotsky in the alleged collaboration with

Germany and Japan than to coordinate a large number of confessions, particularly public

ones, and then coordinate a number of secret, written appeals for clemency, all testifying

to events that never in fact happened.

In order to conclude that, despite the evidence cited in this article, Trotsky did not

collaborate with Germany and Japan one would be forced to assume that the Soviet

authorities orchestrated a vast network of false confessions by many individuals over

many months, all of which inculpate Trotsky of German and/or Japanese collaboration,

and in a more or less consistent manner. There is no evidence that this kind of

orchestration actually took place.

It is tacitly supposed that it all happened “behind the scenes,” out of sight of the

public trials. Yet now that thanks to some archival documents we have a glimpse “behind

the scenes” we can discern no such fabrication. On the contrary: the investigative

materials we now have confirm the trial testimony.

The vast majority of the investigative materials remain top-secret in Russia today.

We simply do not know what kind of evidence they may hold. Some of it is certainly

documentary. We don’t know whether any of it is documentary evidence of Trotsky’s

collaboration with Germany and Japan. Once again: “Lack of evidence is not evidence of

lack.” The fact that we do not know about any evidence in the secret Soviet archives

inculpating Trotsky does not mean such evidence does not exist. It only means we do not

know about any.

We know that there is other documentary evidence of some of the conspiracies.

The Shvernik Report discusses a telegram from a Japanese military attaché to his superior

in Japan testifying to secret contact with a representative of Marshal Tukhachevsky. The

Report gives the text of this telegram. Therefore it must have still existed in 1962-64

when the report was being compiled.

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Yet Kantor does not even mention it in her two supposedly authoritative books on

Tukhachevsky, though of course she knew of it. Kantor wanted to support the theory that

Tukhachevsky and the rest were innocent, and this telegram would not have been helpful.

We don’t know whether the physical document still exists or not. We can be thankful that

the Shvernik Report compilers transcribed and discussed it, though we don’t know why

they did so – it’s not what Khrushchev wanted to be told.

What kind of written documentation of a clandestine conspiracy should we expect

to have ever existed? Both Radek and Tukhachevsky claim that they had notes from

Trotsky which they burned. It would have been foolish in the extreme for them not to

have destroyed such incriminating evidence. The Bolsheviks were experienced in

working conspiratorially. They had years of practice doing so under the Tsar. They knew

better than to keep written lists of fellow conspirators, written plans, and in general

anything in writing that would, if discovered by the NKVD, cause disaster to the

conspiracy. “Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack” of a conspiracy.

Corroborative Evidence

There are two kinds of evidence that corroborate the direct evidence of Trotsky’s

collaboration with Germany and Japan. The first is the testimony of those who like

Nikolai Bukharin and Genrikh Yagoda admitted to participation in a bloc or alliance with

others who had first-hand knowledge of Trotsky’s collaboration with Germany and/or

Japan but who claimed no ties with Germany or Japan themselves.

Yagoda testified that he learned of Trotsky’s direct contact with the Germans

from Avel’ Enukidze and Lev Karakhan. We have examined Karakhan’s testimony above.

Most of Enukidze’s investigative file is still secret. Neither of the two interrogations of

Enukidze published to date mentions his contacts with Trotsky.

Concerning Nikolai Bukharin we have much more information than about any of

the other defendants in the various Soviet trials. We have discovered, edited, and

published his first confession of June 2, 1937 (Furr & Bobrov). This is also the only pre-

trial confession of Bukharin that we have; the Russian government continues to keep all

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the others secret.100 We have also discovered and have prepared for publication the

falsified decree of the Gorbachev-era Soviet Supreme Court “rehabilitating” Bukharin on

February 4, 1988. Neither of these documents was ever made accessible to researchers,

much less published, before or during Gorbachev’s day; both are still top-secret in Russia

today. The “rehabilitation” decree cites a quotation from a document that was secret in

1988 but that we have now discovered. That document is cited as evidence that Bukharin

was innocent. In fact it contains evidence that Bukharin was guilty.

Bukharin’s first confession implicates Trotsky, as does his Trial testimony. Our

published analysis shows that Bukharin was not tortured. Stephen Cohen, the world’s

expert on Bukharin, reached the same conclusion over a decade ago. We have also

examined Bukharin’s appeal of his death sentence to the Soviet Supreme Court, in which

he reiterates his guilt and claims that for his crimes he should be “shot ten times over.”

There is no reason whatever to doubt that Bukharin was telling the truth in his pre-trial

and trial confessions and in his post-trial appeal. But Bukharin was very clear and explicit

that Radek had told him more than once about Trotsky’s involvement with the Germans

and Japanese.

This is corroborative evidence. Bukharin’s first confession corroborates Radek’s

confession at the January 1937 Trial – Bukharin confirms what Radek said, meanwhile

adding a bit more evidence. Bukharin’s first confession also corroborates the truthfulness

of his own statements at his trial in March 1938. Of course the most striking

corroboration is Bukharin’s two appeals after his trial, where he confirms his guilt in the

strongest possible terms.

A second kind of corroborative evidence consists of evidence from persons who

claimed first-hand or second-hand knowledge of Trotsky’s collaboration and who

themselves were working with either Germany or Japan. According to the evidence now

available three of the eight figures in the Tukhachevsky Affair – Primakov, Putna, and

Tukhachevsky himself – had direct contact with both Trotsky and the Germans. The other

six defendants, all officers of the highest ranks, would almost certainly have known about

Trotsky’s involvement.

100 We have discovered one additional confession of Bukharin’s of February 20, 1938. This confession is still secret in Russia. It does not deal with Trotsky.

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Very little of the investigative and judicial (trial) materials in the three Moscow

Trials, the Tukhachevsky Affair, and the broader military conspiracy, has been made

public. The rest remains top-secret in Russia today, probably for the reasons Col. Alksnis

suggests. Still, enough has leaked out that we have a great deal of evidence, some of it

documentary, of German and Japanese collaboration by oppositionists, including military

figures. We have prepared a book-length study of this evidence.

We also have a number of transcripts of interrogation-confessions of Nikolai

Ezhov, head of the NKVD between September 1936 and November 1938. In the earliest

one that we have, an interrogation dated April 26 1939, Ezhov testifies to his own direct

collaboration with German military and intelligence figures. Ezhov stated he too was in

contact with General Hammerstein.101 Hammerstein asked Ezhov specifically how much

influence the Trotskyists had in the Bolshevik Party. The German general’s interest in

this subject is consistent with the considerable evidence we have seen of Trotsky’s

collaboration with Germany.

What kinds of corroborative evidence might be admissible in a criminal trial is a

legal question. It would be decided differently according to the time of the trial and the

jurisdiction or country in which the trial took place. In some jurisdictions rules of

evidence in cases of conspiracy might differ from rules in other criminal cases.

In an historical study we are interested in something else: consistency. The

corroborative evidence is consistent with the direct evidence. The existence of such

corroborative evidence reduces even further the possibility that all the direct evidence

was fabricated – a negligeable possibility by itself.

Trotsky’s Possible Motives

Our conclusions here are based not on any prejudice or animus for or against

Trotsky but on the evidence. The late Pierre Broué, for decades a leading Trotskyist

scholar, admitted on the basis of the evidence that Trotsky deliberately lied to the Dewey

Commission, yet Broué did not believe that to admit this constituted criticism of Trotsky.

101 Lubianka. Stalin i NKVD – NKGB – GUKR «SMERSH». 1939 – mart 1946. Moscow: “Materik”, 2006. No. 37, 52-72. Russian original at <http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/ezhovru.html> and at <http://www.alexanderyakovlev.org/fond/issues-doc/58654>. English translation by Grover Furr at <http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/ezhov042639eng.html>.

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The present essay concludes on the basis of massive evidence that Trotsky did conspire

with the Germans and Japanese. This conclusion is in itself not a criticism of Trotsky.

Whether one evaluates Trotsky’s collaboration in a negative light or not depends upon

one's political values.

Lenin conspired with the Imperial German government and military to go through

the German lines to reach Petrograd in April 1917 on the famous “sealed train.” That led

to the Provisional Government's accusing Lenin and the Bolsheviks of being a “German

spy,” an accusation which is still occasionally voiced by anticommunists.

In 1918 Lenin insisted upon signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, an agreement

which gave the Germans a lot of Russian territory and ended Germany’s two-front war.

Lenin was called a “German agent” by some for doing this too. It is the reason that the

Socialist-Revolutionary Fannie Kaplan tried to kill Lenin and other Socialist-

Revolutionaries did kill Soviet diplomat Moisei Uritskii and German diplomat Wilhelm

Mirbach: they wished to sabotage this “pro-German” peace in order to promote a

continuation of the war. It is the reason Bukharin and other Left Communists considered

arresting Lenin, Stalin, and Sverdlov at that time.102

Trotsky had a complicated view of the USSR in the mid-30s. At times he seemed

to think that it was only Stalin and a few around him who “had to go” – ubrat’ was the

vague term he famously used – in order for the Revolution to be saved. As we shall see

below, his son Leon Sedov was much more specific about the need for Stalin’s

assassination.

Trotsky thought that the leading stratum of the Bolshevik Party, or Stalin at the

very least, had to be removed from power in order for the revolution to be saved both in

the USSR and in the rest of the world. Given this outlook he may have reasoned that what

he was doing was similar to what Lenin had done: compromise with the capitalist powers

in order to save the Revolution.

By the same token, the requirements of conspiracy would have prevented Trotsky

from openly acknowledging such collaboration. The Germans and Japanese would not

102 Bukharin admitted this during the 1920s. At his trial in March 1938 Bukharin vehemently denied that this plot also encompassed the possibility of murdering Lenin, Stalin, and Sverdlov, as several former S-Rs asserted in testimony against him. Whatever his subjective intent may have been, many S-Rs were ferociously anti-Bolshevik and embraced assassination – “terror” in Russian – as a political tactic, so putting Lenin, et al. at the S-Rs’ mercy would certainly leave them subject to possible murder.

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have dealt with him openly. And to do so would have put anybody associated with him at

great risk. Most Trotskyists and sympathizers supported the Russian Revolution and had

not necessarily decided that the only road to saving world communism was to change the

leadership of the USSR at any cost. Knowledge of his collaboration with Germany and

Japan would surely have cost Trotsky a large proportion of his relatively few adherents.

The evidence available to us today overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that

Leon Trotsky collaborated with Germany and Japan in a conspiracy to overthrow the

Soviet government and the Bolshevik Party leadership around Stalin, and to meet the

demands of the fascists for partitioning the USSR, exiling the Comintern, opening the

front to German and Japanese invaders, and making other economic and political

concessions. Historians may alter these conclusions in future if more evidence comes to

light. But these are facts that cannot be wished away.

Did Trotsky Lie Again?

We have already noted that only a small number of men – nine of the defendants

at the three Moscow Trials plus at least three and perhaps as many as six of the military

figures – claimed that they were told of Trotsky’s collaboration with Germany or Japan at

first hand, either from Trotsky himself or from his son Leon Sedov. We believe that there

are no grounds for dismissing this testimony.

But none of these men claimed to have personally witnessed any meetings

between Trotsky (or Sedov) and German or Japanese representatives. Perhaps Trotsky

was lying to them? Is it possible that Trotsky did not in fact have such contacts with the

Germans and Japanese but was only claiming to have them – to raise the hopes of his

followers and his own prestige among them, perhaps?

The evidence suggests this was not the case. Radek, Sokol’nikov, and Iakovlev

testified that they were approached by German and Japanese officials who told them

about Trotsky’s collaboration with their countries. This would seem to rule out any

possibility that Trotsky was simply “bragging” to enhance his reputation among his

followers and within the conspiracy generally. Nor is it just their word. From his very

first confession Bukharin confirmed Radek’s conact with German intelligence.

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Leon Sedov

Trotsky would not have conspired with either German or Japanese officials in

writing. As we have discussed above, it was Bolshevik practice that such deeply secret

matters should be communicated only orally. We cannot rule out the possibility that

Trotsky himself could have met with German or Japanese representatives. But it seems

most likely that he would have done so either chiefly or entirely through his son Leon

Sedov. Sedov had the motive, means, and opportunity to be his father’s main contact with

German and Japanese representatives after 1929 when Trotsky left the USSR.

There is a good deal of suggestive evidence to support this hypothesis. Many of

the men whose testimony about direct collaboration with Trotsky we have cited said they

did so through Sedov. It was Sedov’s address book containing the addresses of

Trotskyists within the USSR that Getty found in the Harvard Trotsky archives (Getty-

Trotsky 34 n.16). Twelve people – Gol’tsman, Ol’berg, Berman-Yurin, Piatakov,

Shestov, Romm, Krestinsky, Rozengol’ts, Uritsky, Putna, Shnitman and Tukhachevsky –

claimed that they were in contact with Trotsky entirely or mainly through Sedov.103

Something about Sedov’s activity can be gleaned from the reports to the NKVD

made by Mark Zborowski, a Soviet agent who managed to insinuate himself into Sedov’s

circle and eventually became Sedov’s close collaborator. Some of the NKVD Zborowski

file became public after the end of the Soviet Union.104

Zborowski was working for Sedov by February 1935. In June 1936 Sedov tried to

recruit Zborowski to go to the USSR as a secret Trotskyist agent, where he would meet

with other secret Trotskyists (Zborowski would not have agreed but evidently Sedov

dropped the subject.)

On November 26 1936 Zborowski reported that Sedov had told he had seen

Piatakov only once since leaving the USSR, in Berlin on May Day 1931 in the company

of Shestov, and that Piatakov had turned away from him without speaking to him, and

repeated the same thing on December 3. But in February 1937 Sedov told the

103 Romm, Krestinsky, and Bessonov claim to have also met Trotsky personally. Some of these men also claimed contact with Trotsky by letter. 104 Zborowski archive, F.31660 d. 9067 Papka No. 28. In Volkogonov Archive, Library of Congress. Some of these same documents are confirmed by John Costello and Oleg Tsarev, Deadly Illusions (New York: Crown, 1993). Tsarev, a former KGB man, had privileged access to KGB files for a time in the early 1990s.

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correspondent of the Dutch socialist newspaper Het Volk that he and Trotsky had not had

contact “as often” with Piatakov and Radek as they had with Zinoviev and Kamenev. He

then corrected himself, saying “To be more precise, we had no contact with them.”105

Thanks to Getty we know that this was a true “slip of the tongue,” an inadvertent

admission of the truth. As we have seen, Getty discovered that Trotsky had indeed been

in touch with Radek and other sympathizers within the USSR during the 1930s. Sedov’s

slip of the tongue suggests that Piatakov had also been in touch with Trotsky, as indeed

would have been logical. This slip of the tongue appears to confirm that Trotsky and/or

Sedov had in fact been in touch with both Piatakov and Radek, as these two men had

testified at the trial just concluded in Moscow. This corroborates their trial testimony.

From this information we can conclude that Sedov trusted and relied on

Zborowski yet still kept much secret from him. Sedov sometimes – we do not know how

often – went out of town, during which time Zborowski did not know what Sedov was

doing. As far as we know Sedov was not shadowed or followed on these trips, while

Trotsky himself seems to have been under closer observation.

Sedov’s denials of having met with Piatakov after leaving the USSR are hardly

conclusive since he would have denied meeting him in any case. They are even less

credible given his unguarded remark to the correspondent of Het Volk. In his Red Book

on the First Moscow Trial Sedov admitted he had met with Gol’tsman and Smirnov.

Trotsky evidently forgot about this because he told the Dewey Commission a few months

later that he had never had any contact with Gol’tsman after leaving the USSR.106 This

just confirms what we already knew – that Trotsky’s and Sedov’s denials mean nothing.

We repeat: this is not a “criticism” of Trotsky and Sedov. Clandestine work requires

deception. It simply means that Trotsky’s and Sedov’s denials cannot be taken at face

value.

On January 22 1937, the eve of the Piatakov-Radek trial, Sedov suddenly said to

Zborowski: “Stalin must be killed!” and then immediately changed the subject. When

Sedov said the same thing the next day Lilia Estrine, who was also present, told him:

105 Arbejderbladet (Copenhagen) February 12, 1937, p. 5. My thanks to Sven-Eric Holmström for this citation. 106 Sedov, Red Book Chapter 14. Sven-Eric Holmström discusses all this in detail in his pathbreaking article “New Evidence Concerning the ‘Hotel Bristol’ Question in the First Moscow Trial of 1936,” Cultural

Logic 2008.

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“Keep your mouth shut!” (Derzhi iazyk za zubami). A few weeks later Zborowski

reported at greater length about Sedov’s approval of “terror” – in Russian, assassination –

in the case of Stalin. Sedov continued in this vein for a time, suddenly breaking off only

when Estrine approached.

At the same time Zborowski reported that Sedov expounded at greater length the

need to kill Stalin, as “the whole regime in the USSR is held up by Stalin, and it would be

enough to kill Stalin for it all to fall apart.” He went on to try to theoretically justify

assassination (terror) as a tactic not only compatible with Marxism but at times essential

to it. Sedov mused about the character necessary for an assassin – one “always ready to

die,” “for whom death must be a daily reality.”107

We do not know whether Sedov was reflecting his father’s view here, but it seems

likely. Sedov had no political organization or goals independent of his father’s, whose

primary and, we must assume, on very sensitive issues, sole political confidant he was.

(Lilia Estrine, later Mrs. David Dallin, was clearly a central figure in Sedov’s

activities and therefore in Trotsky’s as well. The sharp rebuke to Sedov quoted here may

suggest that she knew more about his activities than Zborowski did. Immediately after

Sedov’s death on February 16 1938 Zborowski reported that Lilia Estrine knew of

various archives, one of which she had hidden and about which Zborowski had never

been told anything. Estrine-Dallin remained on good terms with Zborowski until 1955. At

that time he told her of his activities as an NKVD agent, whereupon she broke with him

entirely.108 Estrine remained loyal to Trotsky all her life. Getty has proven that Trotsky’s

secretary Jan van Heijenoort knew about Trotsky’s clandestine contacts but never

revealed anything of what he knew. Lilia Estrine-Dallin did the same.)

By July 1937, a few months later, Sedov had become completely demoralized.

According to Zborowski Sedov was now a drunkard, sometimes drinking all day,

dragging Zborowski with him to bars at night. On his son’s birthday Sedov dragged

Zborowski around to bars in Montparnasse from 6 to 11 p.m. rather than return home

107 As Costello & Tsarev note on p. 283 and n. 45, p. 469, this report bears the handwritten date “11.II.1938.” But this does not appear to be in Zborowski’s handwriting. The remarks about “three weeks later” suggest that the date should be February 11, 1937, three weeks after Sedov’s similar remarks on January 22 and 23, 1937. 108 See “Testimony of Mrs. Lilia Dallin, New York N.Y.” Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States . . .

March 2, 1956. Part 5. (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1956), 136-150.

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where Estrine was waiting for him. Zborowski reported that when he and Sedov parted

for the evening the latter visited a brothel before returning home. Sedov said that he had

abandoned all faith in the Revolution in 1927 (Trotsky had been arrested in November

1927 and quickly expelled from the Bolshevik Party) and now “he did not believe in

anything any longer.” He told Zborowski that women and gambling were his only

pleasures. On one occasion he showed Zborowski “a solid roll of thousand-frank notes.”

At roughly 25 francs to the U.S. dollar and in the middle of the Great Depression, this

represented a large amount of money to be carrying around on one’s person. Zborowski

reported that Sedov had enjoyed the casinos at Monte Carlo and that his “dream” was to

return.

The chronological sequence of the alterations Zborowski noted in Sedov’s habits

and attitude towards political work may be significant. When Zborowski met him Sedov

was energetic and determined. His reaction to the First Moscow Trial of August 1936

was to immediately write the combative Red Book with which Zborowski helped him.

Sedov’s outburst and then longer discussion of assassination coincide with the

Piatakov-Radek Trial of January 1937. This was allegedly the “parallel center,” the

secondary leadership for Trotsky’s conspirators within the USSR. Khristian Rakovsky,

whom Trotsky considered perhaps his oldest and most loyal follower, was also named at

this trial (Rakovsky was a defendant in the Third Moscow Trial of March 1938).109 If, as

the evidence tends to support, these charges were more or less accurate the January 1937

trial would have been a huge blow, the destruction of the main leadership of Trotsky’s

movement in the USSR. The stress occasioned by such a setback might explain Sedov’s

outburst about the need to assassinate Stalin and his slip of the tongue to Het Volk.

There is much evidence to suggest that in early 1937 Hitler was expecting a pro-German

military coup in the USSR.110 Powerful military figures would have represented the best

chance of overthrowing the Soviet regime and bringing Trotsky back.

109 Rakovsky was named at the trial by defendant Drobnis on January 25, 1937. See 1937 Trial p. 207. One authoritative source states that he was arrested on January 27, 1937. See the online biographical source at <http://www.hrono.ru/biograf/rakovski.html>. From K.A. Zalesski, Imperiia Stalina. Biograficheskii

entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ (Moscow: Veche, 2000). Evidently Drobnis had not named him during pretrial interrogations. 110 See Grover Furr, “New Light On Old Stories About Marshal Tukhachevskii: Some Documents Reconsidered.” Russian History / Histoire Russe 13, 2-3 (Summer-Fall 1986) 293-308; at

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The “Tukhachevsky Affair” military men were tried and executed in June 1937.

We have studied their confessions of collaboration with Trotsky above. It may have been

the destruction of this last and best opportunity to return to the USSR that impelled

Trotsky to send the telegram we studied at the beginning of this article. Shortly after this,

in July 1937 Zborowski noted Sedov’s descent into drunkenness, gambling, and

womanizing, and his declaration to Zborowski that all was lost. Such behavior is

consistent with the hypothesis that Sedov’s behavior reflected the final collapse of his

and his father’s hopes. Zborowski, who worked very closely with Sedov, had not reported

any such behavior at any earlier date.111

Deciding On The Basis of the Evidence

Given the evidence available today there is only one objective conclusion: our

hypothesis has been confirmed. On the evidence we are forced to conclude that Leon

Trotsky did collaborate with Germans and Japanese officials to help him return to power

in the Soviet Union. As we have seen, there is no basis to disregard this or to regard the

evidence we have reviewed in this paper as faked, obtained by torture, or is fraudulent in

any other respect.

Deciding according to the evidence demands that we accept the permanently

contingent nature of our conclusion. Any objective assessment of the evidence for this, or

any other historical conclusion, must always be provisional. If and when new evidence is

produced we must be prepared to adjust or even to abandon this conclusion if warranted

by that new evidence. Historical study knows no such thing as “certainty.”

By the same token the evidence compels us to conclude that Trotsky did conspire

with the Hitler and Japanese militarist regimes to help him overthrow the Soviet

government and Communist Party leaders in order to regain power in the Soviet Union.

<http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/tukh.html>. Since this was published more compelling evidence has been discovered. We are preparing an article on this subject. 111 Trotsky’s followers long believed that the NKVD caused Sedov’s death on February 16, 1938 in a Paris clinic where he had undergone an appendectomy. But Zborowski’s reports, confirmed by Costello and Tsarev and seconded by the memoirs of Pavel Sudoplatov who later oversaw the planning of Trotsky’s assassination, all suggest that the NKVD had nothing to do with Sedov’s death (Costello 283-4; Sudoplatov 95-6).

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